The Swan Scandal
by kymbersmith90
Summary: Emma Swan finally knows what it's like to be on the other side of her job, after a one-night stand leaves her pregnant. Four months later she's come to terms with the idea of being a single parent, and is excited to see her baby once more when her shift ends, at her next scan. But the arrival of a famous face to open the new water birthing suite could put a dent in those plans.
1. Prologue

"Hey Ems, I think you have an admirer," Belle called out, shouting over the loud music to make herself heard.

"Oh, he's been staring all night," Ashley giggled. "I think he's just waiting for a chance to get her alone so that he can make his move."

Emma turned her head ever-so-slightly, making it look like she was listening to something her friends were saying, as she peered into the darkened corner that made up the VIP section of the club. Sure enough, tall-dark-and-handsome was still sitting at the very edge of the roped-off section. His eyes would occasionally drift her way so that he could drink in her form before he would return his attention to his drinking buddies.

"I'm uh… I'm just gonna go and use the bathroom," she told her friends, pushing up from her seat to smooth a hand down the white dress she was wearing.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Belle asked.

"She's not going for the facilities," Ruby snorted out. The amount of vodka she'd consumed that night had made her giggles a little higher pitched than usual, and Emma rolled her eyes at her friend's antics.

"I think I'll be okay," she assured the group, as she reached for her bag and set off towards the far end of the building. The restrooms were located just off a long corridor and in a room of their own, away from the loud music and crowded dance floor. It was the perfect place to escape for a few moments to catch your breath and freshen up a little. But when Emma left the women's bathroom to head back to her friends, she wasn't at all surprised to find someone else waiting just outside of the door, lounging casually against the wall.

"The men's room is on the other side," she told him.

"I know. I'm not here for that."

"Then what are you here for?" she challenged. The alcohol in her system wasn't strong enough to leave her feeling like she wasn't in control of herself, but it was enough to make her a little bolder than she would normally be without it. And a whole hell of a lot flirtier.

"To ask if maybe I could buy you a drink?"

Emma bit down softly on her lip as she considered his offer. She knew what he really wanted. A drink would inevitably lead to dancing. Dancing which would at some point become grinding. And then they'd find themselves back in that corridor once more, desperately trying to scratch an itch that seemed to be flaring for them both.

Emma usually prided herself on the fact that she wasn't _that _kind of girl. She didn't do one night stands and quick shags in the hallways of clubs. But it had been so long since someone had scratched that itch for her, and the guy offering to do so was hotter than sin!

"Okay," she agreed softly. "You can buy me a drink."

* * *

"So, what do I call you?" he asked, as the two of them took a seat around a small table not far from where Emma's friends were sat watching their every move.

"Swan," she told him. "You can call me Swan."

"No names?"

"Am I ever gonna see you again?" Emma challenged, even though she already knew what the answer would be.

"Possibly."

"Then the next time I see you, I'll tell you my name," she chuckled, as she took a healthy sip from her whiskey sour. "Now, what should I call you?"

Tall-dark-and-handsome seemed to take a moment to think it over before he finally spoke again. "Jones. You can call me Jones."

"Okay then, Jones." Emma downed what was left of her drink before she stood up and extended a hand back to him. "Do you wanna dance with me?"

Jones took a moment to swirl the rest of the amber liquid around his glass before he finished his drink and then slipped his hand into hers. He quite liked the confident way that she strode through the crowd of people already gyrating on the dancefloor, to find a spot that she deemed perfect somewhere close to the middle of the space. When she turned to face him, Swan let go of his hand and closed her eyes for a few seconds before her hips began to move. He stood and watched her for the longest moment, completely enchanted by her beauty and the fluidity of her movements… until he noticed that the others around them seemed to be watching her too.

Jones wound his arm around her waist to pull her back into his chest, and Emma giggled a little at the action. "You do know that we've only just met, right?" she teased. "I'm not sure you're allowed to be jealous so soon."

"Well, I am," was all he said in reply, as he began moving the two of them together to the music that was doing it's best to drown out their conversation.

Emma wasn't sure how long they spent on the dancefloor. One moment she would be dancing freely, allowing herself just to get lost in the rhythm of the music, and the next she would be back in his arms. The beat of the tracks seemed to merge together until Emma wasn't sure if the same one was still playing, or if it had just come around again.

But one thing she was certain of was the effect she seemed to be having on Jones. Even through the denim of his jeans, he was struggling to hide it.

"I have a room in the city," he leaned down to whisper into her ear, before placing a kiss just behind it.

Emma could feel his smirk against her skin as she melted further into his embrace.

"Come back with me?"

She bit down on her bottom lip as she considered his request. Emma didn't like the idea of just taking off without her friends when she'd come out to celebrate Belle's promotion with them. But she also knew that if they had heard his offer, they'd probably be calling her a taxi right about now. And she had to admit that the prospect of a hotel bed was much more appealing than a corridor in a busy, sweaty club.

"Okay," she said eventually, surprising herself a little.

Jones paused for a moment to pull a top-of-the-range phone from his pocket and tapped out some kind of message before he slid it away and reached for her hand. "Come on," he encouraged, "there's a car waiting outside for us."

"Just how rich are you?" Emma teased softly.

Jones waited until they'd fought their way through the crowds in the room and pushed through a back door, onto the much quieter street outside, before he turned to ask, "You really don't know who I am, do you?"

"Not a clue," she giggled. "I just figured that to use the VIP room, you were probably someone well-off."

"I guess you could say that." He guided her down the path and across the road with a steady hand on the small of her back, before pulling open a door on a black Range Rover for her to climb up into.

Once Emma had taken her seat, Jones slid easily in beside her and the door closed behind him. He said nothing as the person behind the wheel pulled smoothly away from the curb and began the drive back to whatever hotel it was that he was staying at.

The two of them remained silent for the duration of the ride, both still enjoying that pleasant buzz the alcohol was giving them, as Jones stroked his thumb softly over the back of Emma's hand. She wasn't sure when he'd taken it again, but he didn't seem in a hurry to let her go.

When the car rolled to a gentle stop, Emma was surprised to find them at what looked to be another back entrance. The guy behind the wheel hopped out of the vehicle to pull open her door and she stepped down as elegantly as she could. "Thanks," she said, offering him a small smile before smoothing a hand down her dress while she waited for Jones to join her.

"Yes. Thank you, Jacob," he called out, his tone biting with his jealousy. "That'll be all for tonight."

"Yes, Sir," Jacob replied, pushing the door closed and making his way back to the driver's side of the car. Jones didn't bother waiting for it to pull away. Instead, he gave a gentle tug on Emma's hand to guide her into the building.

She wasn't familiar with any of the corridors he walked her down, but that wasn't really surprising. Emma might have lived close to the city, but she'd never stayed at a fancy hotel in it before. Whenever they had a girls' nights out, they always finished the evenings in their own homes as it was much cheaper. And for weekends away, they left the Midlands completely.

She wasn't tipsy enough not to notice the men in suits outside of the door Jones stopped her in front of, though. Emma raised a single brow in question, unsure of how to voice her concerns, but Jones simply shrugged it off. When he eventually pushed through the door to his suite she blurted out, "You're not dangerous, are you?" before she could think it through.

"That depends on who you ask," he chuckled. At Emma's unamused look he hastened to add, "I'm a Captain with His Majesty's Royal Navy."

"You're a navy officer?"

"Captain," he corrected, as he took a step closer to her and settled his large hands onto her hips. "My God you're stunning. I noticed you the moment you walked into that club tonight. And I _know_ I wasn't the only one."

Emma swallowed hard at the lust that was visibly darkening his eyes. "You uh... you're not so bad yourself… _Captain_," she drawled.

The addition of his title had Jones groaning low in the back of his throat before he _finally_ crashed his lips down to hers. Emma dropped her bag to the floor between them as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders to hang on for the ride. His lips were hot and demanding, pushing against hers in a way that told her just how much he'd been aching for her, while he wrapped his hands around her thighs to lift her up and into his arms. She didn't hesitate to lock her ankles behind him as she pushed herself further into his embrace. Emma trusted Jones to get them to some kind of flat surface so they could finally release the tension that had been building between them. It had been far too long since she had been kissed, and Emma wasn't sure she'd _ever_ been kissed the way that Jones was kissing her that evening.

As he began navigating the hotel room he'd booked, Emma dropped her hands down to his shoulders and slowly worked them inwards to start releasing the buttons on his shirt. By the time he dropped her down to the floor by his bed, she had it fully open and untucked from his jeans.

"This fucking dress has been teasing me all night," Jones told her, as he dropped his head to place nuzzling kisses to the bare flesh between her breasts. The bare flesh that had told him right from the start that she wasn't wearing a bra that evening.

"Good to know," Emma panted out. "I guess I won't be returning it Monday morning."

"Don't you fucking dare!"

She swallowed hard at the bolt of lust his command sent through her body and Jones began nosing at the fabric covering her.

"Does this untie?" he mumbled against her skin.

"No," she gasped out. "There's a uh… a zip… at the back."

Jones brought his lips back to hers once more as Emma pushed both his shirt and jacket from his shoulders, leaving his toned torso gloriously bare for her exploration. She wasn't expecting the brush of hair as she ran her hands down his chest. He had looked like the kinda guy that would wax when she first saw him. But she found herself enjoying the slight tickle it caused as she brushed her fingertips through it. And she ached to feel the way it would scratch deliciously against her breasts when they moved together.

The hard lines of muscle made sense, given what she now knew about him. Emma assumed that the navy would have worked him hard, and she could feel that with every move he made as the muscles in his body flexed and relaxed with his actions.

With all the hair that covered his chest, she was surprised to find his back smooth to the touch. Emma wasn't sure if it was natural or if Jones preferred things that way, but she found herself loving the contrast between the flawless skin pulled taut over the muscles there, and the gentle tickle that came through running her hands down his chest.

While she was exploring his body, Jones slid his own hands softly up her back until he found the hidden zipper built into her dress. He tugged it down as far as it would go and then pulled back to watch as Swan gently shimmied her shoulders. The white fabric fell easily down her arms and over her chest to pool around her ankles.

Jones swallowed hard at the sight before him. His Swan was stood right next to the bed wearing a pair of black lace panties, black thigh-high boots, and nothing else.

"Fuck me," he groaned, as he leaned down to pull off one shoe and the sock that covered his foot, before switching to the other.

Emma made a move to do the same thing but was stopped by his firm command of, "Don't! Leave them on."

"Yes… _Captain_," she purred, taking a few small steps back while she watched him work the buckle of his belt open. Emma pulled herself up and onto the bed as Jones pushed his jeans and underwear down in one confident move before he kicked them off to the side. He couldn't seem to take his eyes off the seductress spread out over the sheets.

"You are so fucking beautiful," he told her. Jones climbed up onto the end of the bed and then crawled his way over her, pressing wet kisses along her body as he went.

"You don't need to flatter me," she giggled. "I'm already in your bed."

"I'm not. I'm just… stunned by your beauty, Swan. How are you still single?"

"I work too much," she replied, even though she knew it wasn't the entire truth. But they would only have that one night together, so Jones didn't need to know about her past.

"I know that feeling."

He locked his eyes with hers for a moment before dipping his head to capture her lips with his own again. When his hand slid up her thigh to draw her leg around his hips they both moaned long and deep at the feel of being pressed so tightly together, separated only by the flimsy barrier of her panties.

Emma had expected him to get straight to the main event, given the position they were in. So when he pulled back to begin trailing kisses down her body, her shocked gasps were completely genuine.

"You uh… you don't have to do that," she protested weakly.

"I _want_ to," Jones assured her, as he gently pulled her panties down and off her legs, before tossing them somewhere over his left shoulder.

Emma's eyes slid closed in embarrassment when she felt him settle between her legs and gently part her. She wasn't sure any man had ever gotten that close before, but at the first brush of his nose against where she was already wet and aching for him, she forgot all about her awkwardness.

"Oh," she sighed, letting her legs fall open a little more as Jones took his time to explore her. He trailed his nose over the sensitive spots that had her hips bouncing in his grasp, before following its path with his tongue. By the time he slipped his index finger into her to gently build that pressure forming inside, Emma was a hot, writhing, begging mess. So few men in her life had ever taken the time to focus on her, and none of them had _ever _been as thorough as Jones was being that evening.

"Oh, _Jones_," she moaned, as he finally suckled on her clit, giving her a teasing hint of the pleasure she knew was soon to follow.

"Killian," he mumbled against her flesh. The sound vibrated wonderfully through her body and she moaned again. "My name's Killian."

"Emma," she panted out, when he curled his fingers inside of her. "_Please, Killian."_

That was all the encouragement he needed to apply just the right amount of pressure to have Emma's world sudden darken before those beautiful spots of pleasure began to burst behind her eyes.

"Yes," she gasped. "Yes, yes, yes!"

As Killian eased her through her climax he watched as her face contorted beautifully with the pleasure _he _was giving to her, before finally pulling his fingers from her body. While Emma lay panting for breath beneath him, he reached for his jeans and the wallet inside of the back pocket to pull out the condom he always kept inside of it. Killian took a moment to watch as Emma seemed to come back to herself before he rolled the latex down and over himself.

"Do you think you can handle another?" he teased, gathering her into his arms once more.

"Stop gloating and just fuck me, Captain."

Killian slid into her in one long, confident move, effectively silencing her in the process. He gave Emma a moment to adjust to that wonderful stretch and burn that came from being filled so completely before he hitched her leg back over his hip to settle into an easy rhythm. That familiar push and pull had never felt so good before, and the way that Emma scraped the heel of her boot down his back only seemed to heighten the pleasure from the moment, as he bent his head to begin pressing wet kisses to her skin.

"Oh, _God_," Emma gasped, when a particularly hard punch of his hips had her legs tightening around him.

Killian seemed to get the hint as he picked up his pace, each snap of his hips bordering on painfully pleasurable while he drove them both higher and higher.

"So good," she panted in his ear. "_So good_." She tightened the hand that was woven through his hair to tug his lips back to hers, offering him suckling kisses and teasing nips of her teeth between long, confident caresses with her tongue.

Emma was pretty sure that the heel of her boot tore through the sheets on the bed at one point. The loud sound of fabric ripping was a complete contrast to the harsh pants and whispered pleas that were filling the room. But neither of them seemed to care.

"I can't wait to feel you come around me," Killian panted into her ear, letting his tongue flick out to gently tease the lobe between his words. "You're already so fucking tight."

As if he'd commanded her to do so, Emma felt herself begin to flutter around him at his dirty words, and Killian moaned at how incredible that small action felt.

"So close," she breathed harshly. "I'm so close."

He dropped a hand between their bodies to slide down to where they were joined, making them both groan in frustration once more before he brought it back up to circle her clit.

"That's it, Beautiful," he praised. Emma's moans and pants became higher pitched and needier as her nails dug into his shoulder blades. "Let me feel you. Come all over my cock for me, Love."

"Killian…. _Yes_," she cried, as a sharp pinch from his fingers finally sent her crashing over that precipice once more and into the pleasurable abyss that waited.

When Emma came back down to herself it was to watch while Jones… no… _Killian_ pulled off his condom and wrapped it in a tissue.

He gave her a soft smile as he reached for her foot and pulled off the boot that was still covering it before he did the same to the other. When he was finished, Killian slid back into the bed beside her, tugging the torn sheets up and over their naked bodies. Neither of them said anything as he turned to curl his body around hers, pulling Emma back into his arms. He brushed the hair away from her neck to press a sweet kiss there, but his Swan was already asleep by the time he reached for the light.

* * *

When Killian woke the next morning, it was with the resolve to ask for Emma's number before she left for the day. But as awareness slowly began creeping into the haze of sleep, he realised that he was on his usual side of the bed, and the other was stone cold.

He bolted awake to check the room. His clothes were still where he remembered taking them off the night before and his wallet was still on the table beside the bed, but Emma's dress and boots were gone. And so was she!

"Fuck," he cursed, rubbing a harsh hand over his face.

_How would he ever find her again, when all he had to go on was a relatively common name and a popular description?_

"Fuck," he cursed again, as he realised that he probably never would.

* * *

Before he left Nottingham that afternoon, Killian took a moment to clean his hotel room for the staff. He righted chairs, threw out empty packets and bottles, and made his bed as best he could.

He found a pair of black lace panties behind the television set in the corner of the bedroom and smiled to himself when he realised that Emma must have forgotten them, before he slipped them into his pocket.

When he pushed the tissue containing the used condom into the bin, he thought absolutely nothing of the fact that it was stickier and wetter than it should have been. After all, it wasn't like he'd noticed the small tear in the tip when he'd taken it off.

"Are you ready to leave, Your Highness?"

"Yes, Jacob," he called back, taking one last look around the empty suite before he turned on his heels to stride confidently out of the room.

* * *

**Emma's look for this chapter is based on Jen's look for the Marchesa fashion show during New York Fashion Week September 2017**

**Thanks for reading. **


	2. Chapter 1

**Twenty-One Weeks Later**

"That's it, Abbie, one more big push for me," Emma encouraged.

"I can't do it," Abbie cried, her pain and frustration taking over at that moment.

"Yes, you can," her midwife soothed. "You're almost there. One more big push for me and you'll be able to hold your beautiful little boy in your arms at last."

Abbie's husband leaned in closer to rub his wife's back soothingly as she bent forward in the bed when her next contraction hit.

"That's it," Emma praised, "You're doing so well. Keep that pressure up for me. You've got this, Abbie. He's on his way. Keep going, keep going, keep going."

With one last big push, Abbie's little boy made his entrance into the world, and into the arms of his mother's midwife.

"You did it," Emma praised softly. She was already working on autopilot as she gently cleaned the little boy down to clear his airways, and then lifted him up and into the arms of his tired, but truly elated mother.

While the new parents in the room were enjoying their first few moments with the tiny addition to their family, Emma began the process of cleaning up a little to allow for as much blood to pass from the placenta to the baby as possible.

When she'd finished, she quickly changed her gloves and prepared the Syntocinon injection to help with the delivery of the placenta. "Okay, Abbie, you might feel a short, sharp scratch on your thigh," she told the new mum, but as was normal, her patient didn't seem to register either Emma's voice or the injection that was given to her. Emma waited a few more minutes to allow for the blood transfer to finish before she clamped the cord, ready for cutting.

"Does daddy wanna do the honours?" she asked, holding out a rather scary looking pair of scissors to the man who was still staring down at the little boy in his wife's arms.

"Uh… yeah," he mumbled softly, scrubbing a hand over his face as he took the instrument and made the cut exactly where Emma had directed. "That was kinda gross," he whispered to her, as he handed them back.

"It always is," Emma chuckled. She watched him make his way back up to the head of the bed to join his wife and son, before she turned her attention back to preparing for the delivery of the placenta.

* * *

"Mrs. Wallace in room four is now the proud mother of a healthy baby boy," Emma declared an hour later, as she dropped down into the only free seat behind the large desk.

"Bless her. Did she need the forceps in the end?" Belle asked.

"No. The mere thought of them seemed to be enough to motivate her to push past that barrier."

"It often is," her friend chuckled, before turning back to her own heavy workload.

The two women sat in silence for a moment, just allowing the calm of the unit to wash over them for what felt like the first time all day. Emma knew that she had a ton of paperwork to get started on before Mrs. Wallace could be discharged with her new son, but she'd been in the delivery room for over four hours, and the chance to just sit and do nothing for ten minutes rarely presented itself in her line of work.

"How are you feeling?" Belle asked, picking up on her friend's exhaustion.

"Like I could sleep for the rest of the week," she chuckled. "Thank God I actually have it off."

Belle leaned over to rub her friend's shoulder in solidarity as Emma began tapping away at the computer to start the last of the work she needed to do before her shift ended. It was unlikely that she'd be out of the hospital on time, given how long she'd spent in the delivery room with Mrs. Wallace. She only hoped that nobody else would come in needing a midwife before she could escape for the day.

"Miss. Styne has a little girl," Ruby declared, making her own way back to the large desk in the centre of the room. "A healthy seven pounds and three ounces of complete adorableness."

"Ugh, how do you always get the easy deliveries?" Emma sighed. Her friend didn't appear to have a hair out of place. It really was unfair.

"I'm just lucky," Ruby teased. "You guys should probably go and clean up though."

"Why?" Emma was already distracted by the details she was busy entering into the digital records they kept, so she completely missed the looks on her friends' faces.

"Because we have visitors this morning, remember?"

Looking up at the brunette leaning over the desk, Emma cocked a brow that clearly communicated she remembered nothing, before getting back to her work.

"The administrators are out in force because that hot prince is coming to officially open the new water birthing centre," Belle reminded her gently.

"Hot prince?" Emma asked.

"Yeah, you know the one. The guy that isn't gonna be king. He was just away with the navy recently doing…. something… somewhere. I dunno. I remember it was a big secret though."

"Yeah, Prince Killian," Ruby added with a dreamy sigh.

"Killian?" Emma's heart flip-flopped a little at the familiar-sounding name. Of course, her Killian wasn't a prince. While she didn't know much about the royal family, she was pretty certain that this Prince Killian wouldn't be spending his free time picking up strangers for one night stands in clubs in Nottingham. He'd probably never even been to Nottingham before. But ever since that night, almost five months ago, she'd been asking herself the same question over and over again:

_What if you'd waited to leave until he'd woken up? _

"Yep. How do you not know this?" Ruby asked. "They're always in the news for something."

"I read the news that covers the more important world issues," she defended hotly. "And I highly doubt that someone lucky enough to have been born into the royal family is using their time and money to advance medical breakthroughs or put an end to the wars around the globe. So he doesn't really come up that much when I check the BBC News app."

"You live such a sheltered life," her friend chided good-naturedly. "But seriously, you should go and clean up a little. They're gonna be taking pictures and recording video footage."

"Of course they are," Emma sighed, as she pushed her chair away from the desk. "Heaven forbid they wait until shift change is over!"

Ruby watched her friend head back to the locker room, grumbling to herself the entire way there, before she dropped down into the free chair that Emma had just vacated to start work on her own discharge papers.

* * *

"This is gonna have to do," Emma declared, as she made her way back to the midwives' station a few moments later. She'd changed into a fresh dress, tidied up her hair and applied a little more foundation. But it was nowhere near as glamorous as her look for a night out would have been.

"I have some lipstick in my bag that you could use," Ruby suggested, even as her friend shot a deadly glare in her direction.

"I am ten hours into a twelve-hour shift on day four of said shift pattern. I've delivered two babies already today. I am _not _putting on lipstick for work. I don't care what family this guy is from. He can kiss my arse if he thinks I'm gonna be looking my best right now and so can the rest of the damned administration team."

Ruby raised her hands in submission before standing to let her friend sit back down so she could try and finish as much of her paperwork as she possibly could, before their shift was due to end. Unfortunately, Emma hadn't even made a dent in her workload before their chairman and CEO were making their way onto the unit to begin preparing all of the available staff for the arrival of their guest of honour.

Emma tried her hardest to hide behind the desk so that she could spend the remainder of her shift doing her job, instead of kissing people's arses, but she couldn't dodge the all-seeing eye of their Matron.

"Come along, Emma," Kathryn encouraged. "Surely you'll enjoy getting out from behind that desk for a while?"

"I have been out from behind this desk," she grumbled. "To deliver two babies."

"And that's exactly the kind of thing His Royal Highness is going to want to hear. The paperwork can wait until he's left."

Emma wanted to grumble a little bit more about their lack of overtime pay, but she knew that she could only get away with so much before she was given a formal warning. So she sucked up her complaints and tried to fix the best fake smile onto her face that she could possibly manage, as she dragged herself over to the small line of staff that was being assembled to greet the prince that would soon be arriving.

"Cheer up, Ems," Ruby teased. "How many other times in your life will you be able to say that you've met a member of the royal family?"

"Hopefully never again," she threw back at her friend, as she sunk back into the wall behind her.

_God, she was exhausted._

* * *

The moment Killian stepped out of his car his hand went to the button on his jacket, to make sure that he was completely presentable, before he turned to wave at the small crowd of people and members of the press that had gathered to see him.

"Good morning, Your Highness. I'm Greg Mendell, the Chairman of Queen's Medical Centre. It's a pleasure to have you here with us today."

"The pleasure is all mine," he assured the guy, as he offered a hand for shaking. As Greg Mendell gestured towards the large building in front of them, Killian turned back to offer one last look at the group of people who had been waiting for his arrival. He knew that the chances of _her _being there would have been small, given that she genuinely didn't seem to have recognised him that evening. But it hadn't stopped him from hoping. Being back in the city once more was making his entire body ache with the need to try and track her down. It had been months, and he still couldn't get her out of his head.

_How many blonde-haired, twenty-something women called Emma could there possibly be in Nottingham? _

"Tell me about the new unit," he encouraged, hoping that his work for that morning would help to distract him from dwelling on what could have been.

"We call it The Sanctuary," Mendell explained. "It promotes a more relaxed and natural birthing experience for our women. It's run by an incredibly talented midwifery staff, who are some of the very best in this country. We have a few of the night shift here eager to meet you this morning, and I'm told that the unit as a whole has seen twelve births while they've been on shift. So I'm sure they have some truly wonderful stories to share with you today."

"That's fantastic, but they must all be so exhausted," he chuckled. "What kind of shift patterns do they work?"

"The usual for a member of the NHS is twelve and a half hours for four days, and then the following four days off."

"Oh, wow. They're definitely exhausted then. I could have timed this better."

Mendell laughed off the prince's concern as he pointed out a few different areas of the hospital and staff members that they happened to bump into on their way over to the maternity unit. Killian did his best to look interested and make polite conversation where he could, but he had to admit that opening maternity units was not his thing. He was only stepping in that day to fill in for his mother, who had been battling flu all week.

He'd have preferred to have been back at his cottage, enjoying a day of doing nothing rather than jumping straight back into his royal duties. After all, he'd only been in the country for four days after spending sixteen weeks on deployment off the coast of the Falkland Islands. But his father had insisted that he was the only available family member who could step in on such short notice.

When the sign for the maternity unit finally came into view he breathed a small sigh of relief. Hopefully, he could open the new birthing suite and still make it back home in time for the Champions League game that evening.

"The unit remains locked at all times," Mendell explained, as he pushed an intercom button on the wall. "Only the staff who work here have an access pass for it, to keep it as secure as possible. And we also offer small electronic tags that are slipped onto babies at birth. They alert the staff if someone tries to leave the unit with a child without authorisation."

Killian wasn't sure if he was supposed to be reassured by that knowledge or horrified that children were being security tagged, so he simply smiled and nodded as a buzz rang through the corridor and the light above the door turned green.

"This way," Mendell encouraged, pulling it open to lead the way down the corridor. The moment they turned the corner at the very end of it Killian could feel the change in atmosphere wash over him. The place felt like it was built on hopes and dreams, and he found himself relaxing a little more with every step that he took.

"These are our assessment rooms," Mendell explained, as they passed by a series of closed doors on either side of the room. "This is where the women come when they are first admitted to the unit. The staff use these rooms to assess just how far along their labour is. Sometimes the women will be encouraged to head home and return when they're further along. Other times, they remain here until they're ready to head down to the delivery suites."

"Why would you encourage women to go home again?" Killian asked, a little confused as to what he was hearing.

"The suite can only hold so many women, so we encourage those in the early stages of labour to return home and carry on as normally as they possibly can until their contractions become more frequent. That way, we're not denying beds to women who are about to give birth in favour of those who are hours away. Labour is unpredictable. For some women, it lasts an hour from start to finish. For others, it can take a few days."

"A few days?" The prince was clearly horrified at the mere thought of someone being in labour for that long, and the people around him chuckled a little at the look on his face. "I've never been more pleased to be a guy than I am right now."

The small party carried on down the hallway, pausing to greet the staff at the midwives' station as they fielded calls and rushed between rooms, before they approached the line of team members waiting to greet the young prince.

"These are some of our wonderful staff members currently on shift," Mendell explained. "The midwives gathered here have all been present for births overnight, and just have their paperwork to file before the end of their shifts. But they were very excited to meet you, Your Highness."

"And I'm excited to meet them," Killian assured him, before he turned to the first person in line to offer the guy his full attention.

There seemed to be some kind of hierarchy involved in the line-up, as Killian first met with cleaning staff and administrators before he was introduced to volunteers and assistants. The midwives seemed to be towards the end of the gathering and looked to be the most exhausted and unamused of the bunch. Not that Kilian could blame them. The last thing he'd want to do is stand around waiting to greet a member of the royal family if he'd been on his feet for ten hours already.

"This is Belle French," Mendell introduced, and the young women before him curtsied before taking his offered hand. "She's been working with us for over four years now and was recently promoted to a team leader role."

"It's lovely to meet you, Miss French."

"You too, Your Highness." The woman might have swooned a little when he smiled down at her, but Killian had long since gotten used to the effect he had on members of the opposite sex.

Her friend stood to her left was much more outgoing. After their introduction, Ruby Lucas spoke for a brief moment about the baby girl she had helped to deliver earlier that morning, and how much she loved her job.

Even though Killian hadn't been particularly thrilled about the engagement when it had been given to him, he had to admit that hearing the professionals talk about the beauty and miracle of birth, between screams from women currently bringing their children into the world, was rather amusing. And oddly fascinating.

"And this is Emma Swan," Mendell announced, as they paused before the last person in the small line-up. "I'm told she's been our MVP on shift today, as two of her ladies have given birth in the last ten hours. Isn't that right, Emma?"

Killian didn't hear Emma's reply. He hadn't heard anything after Mendell had said her name, because the moment he had, the prince's eyes had shot down to meet hers as he sucked in a startled breath.

_Emma Swan… why hadn't he made that connection twenty-one weeks ago? _

"Emma," he finally whispered, completely unaware of everyone else around him watching the two of them interact with growing levels of concern.

Emma seemed to be just as stunned as he was as her mouth hung open a little in surprise, and her eyes had widened to an almost impossible size.

"I uh… It's nice to see you again," he offered lamely, because asking _why did you sneak away while I was sleeping? _would cause them both far too many problems that morning.

"Yeah. You too," she eventually whispered, as she swallowed heavily.

Killian shook his head a little to try and clear it of all the memories and questions that had come rushing back to him at the sound of her name. He was working and he knew that he was being photographed, so he really needed to put his game face back on. But he still wasn't over the shock of seeing her standing before him that morning. He was half-tempted to pinch himself, just to make sure that he wasn't dreaming.

"Are you okay?" someone whispered.

Killian had just opened his mouth to reply to the question when he realised that it wasn't being directed at him. Ruby Lucas had a hand on Emma's arm and was looking at her friend with an almost motherly amount of worry on her face.

"Do you need to sit down?" she pressed.

"No. I'm fine," Emma assured her, as she offered the other woman a weak smile. "It's just been a long day."

Ruby nodded her head in understanding and gave her friend a small smile of her own before she stepped back into line.

"Sorry," Emma sighed, as she turned her attention back to the men stood in front of her. "These shifts are bad enough without pregnancy added into the mix." She must have realised exactly what she'd said the moment she'd finished speaking, as her eyes widened with horror.

"Pregnancy?" Killian asked. His gaze dropped down from Emma's face to take in the rest of her body and he paled the moment his eyes reached her tummy. While it had been hidden well under the ugly blue dress that formed part of her uniform, now that it had been pointed out to him, it was impossible to miss the slight swelling of her stomach.

_Emma Swan was pregnant._

* * *

**Thank you so much for the wonderful response to the prologue! I really hope you guys will enjoy this one. **


	3. Chapter 2

Emma watched as the prince's eyes dropped down her body to linger over her slightly rounded stomach before they snapped up to meet hers again. She could see the questions behind his gaze, and suddenly the atmosphere in the room felt suffocating.

"I uh… I need to go and sit down," she declared in a shaky voice, before taking off for the privacy of the on-call room. Once she had the door safely closed behind herself, Emma let the wave of panic she'd been holding in wash over her.

"Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God, oh God, oh God," she chanted as she paced the floor.

Everything had been so simple before.

Sure, her parents had been a little worried at first when she'd told them that she was pregnant, and had met the baby's father during a drunken one-night stand. Hell, she'd been worried when she'd first taken that test and the little screen had displayed the word _pregnant_ on it.

But eventually things had calmed down, and everyone in her life had seemed to accept that Emma would be having and raising her child alone. Now that she knew exactly who her baby's father was, and he was right there in the hospital she worked at, she didn't know what to do.

Would he even believe her if she told him the truth? They had used protection, after all. And it was surprising just how many people didn't seem to know that condoms weren't infallible.

She didn't want him to think that she was trying to trap him into some kind of relationship with her, or that she was hoping to make money from him. But she also wasn't sure she wanted to let him leave that morning without knowing the truth.

"What am I going to do?" Emma whispered to herself, as she dropped down heavily onto one of the beds in the room.

* * *

Killian's initial plan had been to get in and out of the hospital as fast as he could. Pregnancy and babies weren't really his thing, and he wasn't sure he'd be welcomed on a ward full of new mothers, celebrating the births of their babies.

But now that he'd seen Emma again, and even with what had been revealed to him during those brief few moments, he knew that he couldn't leave without saying a proper goodbye to her.

So Prince Killian lingered for as long as he could. He spoke with the staff who were free to talk to him about the new water birthing centre that was now a part of the hospital, and with the patients that were happy to speak to a member of the royal family between feeding their babies or labour contractions.

He knew that Emma would have to emerge eventually, and when she did, he quickly excused himself to make his way over to where she was trying her best to sneak out of the on-call room unseen.

"Emma," he greeted softly, making her jump a little in surprise. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."

"It's okay," she assured him, as she dropped a hand down to rub over her rounded belly. "Is there um… is there anything I can help you with, Your Highness?"

"Killian. Of all the people here, _you _can call me Killian," he told her, as he stuffed his hands into his back pockets. "And no. I uh… I just wanted to offer you my congratulations. Your partner must be very happy."

Killian wasn't sure why he'd said it. He'd been trying hard not to think about Emma Swan having a partner to go home to when her shift was over. Or even worse, having one to go home to after he'd fucked her that night all those months before.

"I don't have a partner," she quickly blurted out, her face flaming bright red with her admission.

"Oh. Sorry. I uh… I just assumed. I mean… the baby." An alarm bell in the back of his mind was beginning to ring, but Killian did his best to ignore it. Because _that _couldn't possibly be true.

Emma flicked a quick glance up and down the corridor before she opened the door to the on-call room once more, and nodded her head to suggest that he should step inside. Killian did so without hesitation, even as a look of curiosity began working its way over his face.

When Emma had the door safely shut behind herself she turned to rest her back against it as she twisted the small lock, to make sure that they wouldn't be interrupted.

"What's going on, Emma?"

"If I'd have known who you were, I would have found a way to contact you. I would have told you as soon as I knew what was happening," she began carefully. "But I didn't know. And I don't follow you. I barely have the time to follow my family on Facebook as it is, I'm certainly not wasting the time I do have following celebrities who don't care about my life. But if I'd known, I'd have tried to contact you sooner. I didn't want you to find out like this, Killian."

"Find out what?" he pressed. Because if she was trying to say what he thought she was, he was going to need to hear the words with his own ears, while he watched them leave her mouth.

"The baby… the baby's yours."

"No," he chuckled dryly. "No, it's not. We used a condom."

"Condoms are not one hundred percent reliable," she explained patiently, like it was something she'd had to do many times before in her life.

"How do you know it's mine? It could be any guy's if that's the case."

Emma flinched a little at his biting tone and moved to sit on one of the beds in the room. She really didn't want to be having this conversation after being awake for over fourteen hours.

"I know it's yours because you're the only guy I've had sex with in months," she explained, staring down at the hem of her dress. "I know that's probably hard to believe, given that I went home with you so easily that night. But I'm not a whore. I just… there was something about you that called to me."

When she flicked her eyes up to meet his once more they were still icy cold, and Emma hated seeing that look there when she knew how soft and gentle they could be.

"Look, I'm not telling you this because I wanna use my child for money, or fame, or… whatever. I couldn't care less about that. I just… I thought you deserved to know that you were going to be a father. If you don't want anything to do with your child that's fine. I've already accepted life as a single parent, so it's not like it's a great loss to me."

When he said nothing else, Emma pushed herself up to her feet, ready to head back to the midwives' station to finish her paperwork for the shift. She'd just twisted the lock on the door when a strong arm shot out to grab hold of her elbow, and she turned back slowly to find Killian just a step behind her.

"I need some sort of proof," he told her. "It's not that I don't believe you, Emma. I _want _to. I really do. I just… I need some kind of proof. My family… it's not the first time that someone's tried to accuse us of impregnating them during a one-night stand. And most of the time, we've never even met that person before. Given that you and I actually did the deed, I'm gonna need _something_ more than your word right now to believe this. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I understand."

And she really did. As much as the knowledge that he didn't completely believe or trust her stung, Emma could see why he was asking for irrefutable proof. She didn't even want to think about all of the false claims that had been made about his family in the past, with the intention of making someone else rich or famous.

"I uh… I can get you a paternity test when the baby's born," she told him. "Then you'll know for sure."

"Is there not um… surely there's something we can do before that?" he asked, taking a step closer to her even as he brought a hand up to rub at the stubble that covered his face.

Emma sighed while she considered her options. "There's a test that can be conducted in utero," she told him. At the confused look on his face, she clarified, "It means while the baby's in the womb. It carries a small chance of miscarriage, though. So I um… I'm gonna need some time to think about that. You might just be finding out about this child, but I've had over four months to love it."

"I understand," he assured her. "I just… if it's really mine, I'd like the chance to get to know the baby too."

Emma nodded her understanding even as her eyes began to water slightly. Her damned hormones were all over the place lately and she hated it. She wasn't normally so emotionally unstable, but she'd cried more so far that year than she had in her entire adult life.

"I uh… I should let you get back to work," he chuckled. "Can I give you my number? That way, you can call me when you've made a decision?"

"Yeah. Sure." Emma pulled her phone out of the pocket of her dress and unlocked the device before handing it over for Killian to put his details into it. When he passed it back to her their fingers brushed gently against each other's for just a moment, and her eyes shot up to meet his before she finally pulled away to pocket the device once more.

Either her hormones were still acting up, or that spark of desire that had been present when they'd last seen each other was still there now, and touching him again had brought it roaring back to life.

"It was um… it was nice seeing you again, Emma," he offered, and she thought she could hear a slight strain to his voice. One that suggested the prince might have felt that spark just like she had.

"Yeah. You too, Killian. I'll be in touch soon."

He offered her a tight smile as he made his way past her and over to the door, before turning back to tell her, "Take care." Prince Killian was gone before Emma could even think to say anything else.

* * *

"Hey, are you okay?" Belle asked, as she dropped down into the seat beside her friend after all of the chaos from the morning had cleared.

"Huh, what?"

"Do you need me to finish up here for you so that you can get home?" She reached out to rub her friend's arm softly, and Emma sighed a little at the contact.

"Nah. I'm almost finished with this. But thanks for offering." She gave Belle a small smile before turning her attention back to her work. However, Belle could sense that her friend was still distracted by something, given the lack of typing that was taking place. It was a long few minutes of awkward silence before Emma finally worked up the courage to say, "Hey, Belle, can I ask you something?"

"Of course," she chuckled. Her shift had been over for thirty-three minutes and all of her work was done. But Belle had noticed the change in her friend after Prince Killian had left the unit, so she'd been waiting around on the off-chance that Emma might need someone to open up to before she left.

"If you were in my situation right now, and you'd found the father of your child, would you consent to a prenatal paternity test to prove he was the baby's dad, or would you make him wait until after the child was born?"

"You've found the guy?" she asked, completely ignoring Emma's question.

"Maybe. But I think he's gonna want proof. And I don't know if I should make him wait for it."

"Well… I think that depends on a couple of factors," Belle answered diplomatically. "What's the advantage of doing the test now?"

"I guess… I guess he'd feel more comfortable getting involved and bonding with the baby, knowing that he was definitely the child's father."

"Then in that case, yes. I'd take the test." At Emma's raised brow, Belle added, "It carries the same risk as screening for Down's, or Edwards' or Patau's syndrome, and I don't think you'd hesitate to have the test done in that situation, so that you could adequately prepare yourself for birth. Even though this isn't quite the same thing, if the father wants to get involved, then this is just another way of preparing yourself for the baby's birth. I assume one of the advantages to him finding out sooner is that he'd want to be there with you, to see his child brought into this world. And it does only carry a minimal risk," she reminded her friend. "But this is not a decision to make lightly and it's certainly not _my _decision to make. So take some time for yourself and think about it, Emma. Because at the end of the day, _you're_ the only person whose opinion matters on this."

"Thanks, Belle. You're the best," she told her friend, as she leaned in to offer the other woman a one-armed hug.

"I am! Which is why I'm gonna finish this up so that you can get off." Belle wore a look on her face that told Emma the issue wasn't up for debate. "Besides, don't you have somewhere to be this afternoon?"

Emma dropped her gaze down to the small swell of her stomach as she rubbed a gentle hand over the top of it. "Yeah," she chuckled. "I do."

* * *

After heading back to her small home for a few hours to get some sleep, Emma found herself back at Queen's once more that afternoon, taking a seat in their ultrasound department for her anomaly scan. Even though she was excited to see her baby once more, her mind continued to wander back to the bombshell that had been dropped on her earlier that day.

When she'd first found out that she was pregnant, Emma had tried to track down the mystery guy she'd met in that club, and had failed miserably. She'd spent every night she wasn't on shift at the bar there for over three weeks, nursing a lemonade, and he'd never once returned. Eventually, she'd been forced to come to terms with the fact that her child would probably grow up never knowing its father.

But now… now she had a whole new set of worries to contend with.

There wasn't a doubt in her mind that Prince Killian was her baby's father. She hadn't lied to him when she'd said that he was the only guy she'd been with in months. If anything, she'd probably understated just how long her drought had been, before he'd come into her life. So she knew that when she gave him the DNA test he was asking for, it would tell him that he was going to become a father early next year.

But then what?

Killian had implied that he wanted to be a part of his child's life, but Emma wasn't even sure how that would happen. He lived in London and she lived in Nottingham, which wouldn't make sharing custody easy. From what she could remember of her childhood, her friends with divorced parents hadn't always enjoyed splitting their time between two homes and two families. And that was without the added complications that came from having an _actual _prince as a father.

_Oh God, what had she gotten herself into? _

Emma was so caught up in her own mind that she didn't even hear her sonographer calling out her name when it was time for her appointment.

"Emma Swan," the technician called a little louder, and her head eventually shot up to meet the other woman's gaze.

"Yes. Sorry. Long day at work," she chuckled, as she reached down to grab her bag. Emma made her way through the maze of chairs to follow after the woman dressed all in white, as she was led down the corridor and through to a small, private room.

"It's no worries. You're one of us, right?" the technician asked, as she checked the notes written inside the file in her hands.

"Yeah. Midwife." Emma pulled off her coat to drape it over the back of one of the chairs before she hauled herself up onto the bed.

"Oh, did you get to meet the prince this morning?" The technician was busy pulling her chair up to the portable computer that was placed beside the bed, so she missed the small frown that creased her patient's face at the mention of the young royal.

"Yeah. But I don't remember much of it," Emma lied. "I was ten hours into my shift, so I think I spaced a little."

"That's a shame," the other woman commiserated, before turning her attention back to her job. "If you could just pop the button on your jeans for me and then push them down a little?"

Emma did as she was asked, wiggling the tight material down her hips as she lifted her shirt to expose her slightly rounded belly. The technician handed her a large sheet of tissue paper, which Emma tucked into the top of her underwear, before she warned, "This is going to be a little cold," as she proceeded to squirt out some gel onto Emma's tummy.

There was a moment of silence while Emma adjusted to the pressure of the wand moving across her stomach, and the technician used the time to find a good spot to start her measurements from. When she was finally happy, and the sound of soft clicks began to fill the room, she asked, "Was he as good looking in person as he is on TV?"

"Huh?"

"The prince," she clarified. "He's always been the better looking of the two. I was just wondering if the magazines and TV enhanced that."

"Oh, um… no," Emma mumbled quietly. "He's uh… he's better looking in person."

"Damn."

The two women shared a slight chuckle before the sonographer reached up to twist the monitor a little towards the bed and said, "There we go. Baby's nice and relaxed today, sucking on his or her thumb."

Emma turned her head to fix her eyes on the black and white screen as she watched her child wave its fist around a little, before finally sucking its thumb back into his or her mouth.

"Did you want to know the baby's gender?"

"No," she replied. Her eyes were glued to every move her child was making that afternoon, and suddenly things didn't feel quite as daunting as they had in the waiting room. "Being a midwife, not much surprises me during labour now, so I figured I'd keep this one good surprise for the big day."

"I don't blame you," the other woman assured her, as she went back to work taking all of the necessary measurements to make sure that there wasn't anything wrong with the baby. Emma's eyes followed each of the small clicks she made, cataloguing the information she found there herself. While she'd seen plenty of ultrasound scans throughout her career, none of them would ever compare to the wonder of seeing the results of her own that afternoon.

"Do you want some pictures to take home for dad?" the technician asked, when she'd finally finished marking down all of her findings. "It's such a shame he had to miss this. I find that men are always mesmerized by getting to see their child this way, given that they miss out on all of those little nudges and kicks that we get to experience."

Emma opened her mouth to point out that she didn't have a partner to take the images home to, but before she could speak the words, an image of Killian flashed through her mind, along with a sudden revelation.

Killian hadn't come across as cold or distant while she'd been with him that night all those months before. If anything, he'd been nothing but tender and loving towards her. And if that was an indication of the type of man he was, she knew that he'd make a wonderful father. The kind that would treasure every single moment of her pregnancy, all the way through to the birth of their child and the many years beyond.

But without a DNA test to confirm what she already knew, Killian would likely force himself to hold back. He would miss out on moments that he would never get to experience again with his child, for fear of getting too attached to a baby that could be proven not to be his. And at that moment, Emma had the answer to both of her questions on the tip of her tongue.

So, as she whispered the words, "Yes please," to her sonographer, she made up her mind to schedule the tests necessary to give Killian that peace of mind he'd asked her for.

* * *

**Sorry for the delay in posting this chapter. Real life forced me away from my fandom responsibilities for a while, but I'm hoping to get caught back up over the summer. **

**Thanks for reading and reviewing. **


	4. Chapter 3

Killian was just sitting down to lunch with his parents when he felt his phone vibrate inside of his jacket pocket.

"Put that away," his mother sighed, as she spread a fine linen napkin over her lap while the staff were busy pouring glasses of water and wine for everyone. It didn't matter what time of the day it was, if royals sat down to eat, it was an occasion that required the finest of wines.

"I'm just gonna see who it is and then I will," he promised, fishing out the device and flicking on the screen to see who was trying to contact him. There weren't an awful lot of people who had his personal number, so Killian assumed that it was one of his friends trying to reach him.

He hadn't been expecting to see the name SWAN on his screen.

"I uh… I'll be back in a moment," he mumbled, pushing away from the table before his parents could say anything.

He'd tried hard not to think about Emma Swan since his return to London, because he honestly didn't know where to begin processing everything that she'd told him. And if he was being brutally honest with himself, he'd never expected her to contact him again. After all, it wouldn't have been the first time a woman he knew had tried to play the pregnancy card for more attention, and had then disappeared when he'd asked for proof. (Although, this one, he'd actually slept with.) So he'd desperately tried to push all thoughts of the beautiful blonde from his mind and instead, focused on his royal duties. But now that she was reaching out to him, Killian couldn't stop the memories of their night together from flooding his mind.

_God, she had the softest skin. _

He could have spent hours just running his hands all over her body, seeing where she liked to be touched and where she didn't. He wondered if she was ticklish and if he'd ever get the chance to find that out for himself.

Shaking his head to clear his mind, Killian made a beeline for the nearest bathroom. The restrooms had always been the safest places inside of the Palace. Killian and Liam had learned that at an early age. If they ever needed to get away from one of their parents, the boys would run for the nearest bathroom and lock the door safely behind themselves. Although he was no longer a little child, Killian still made use of the privacy they offered to him as an adult. So the moment he had the door locked he pulled out his phone and opened up the message to read it through - twice.

**Hi, It's Emma (from the club. And the hospital). **

**I've thought about your request and I'm willing to go ahead with the test. Do you have a company that you want to handle the samples? I assume you'll want full control over this so that you know the result is genuine and hasn't been tampered with. However, I'll need to know who will be performing the procedure, given the risk that it carries. And I'd prefer it to be taken by someone who has experience in doing so. **

**I'm about to start my next shift pattern, so I'm afraid the next few days aren't an option for me. But if you let me know when you've chosen someone, I'm sure we can arrange something that works for us both. **

**I hope you're well. **

**E**

Killian dropped down onto the chaise that rested against the wall of the room and ran a harsh hand through his hair. He hadn't expected Emma to agree to the procedure, given what she'd said about the risk it carried. So he certainly hadn't been expecting her to hand over so much control to him.

However, there was another reason that Killian had been expecting her to refuse the test. Until that moment, he still hadn't been entirely convinced that _he _was the father of her child. Sure, the dates had seemed to match and Emma had come across as genuine in what she'd said to him. But a part of him had thought that maybe there had been another man. One she didn't want to admit to sleeping with, or one that maybe fell just outside of her estimated dates. One that was the more likely candidate for her baby's father.

Now that she'd contacted him agreeing to have a paternity test taken on her baby, Killian was starting to believe there was a very real possibility that he might actually become a father soon.

After taking a few deep breaths to calm himself down, he read Emma's message through once more before he began tapping out a reply - and then deleted it. He typed out a few more messages and erased each one of them too. Everything he wrote sounded far too formal to send to Emma, and if she really was carrying his child, the last thing he wanted to do was accidentally offend her.

(He'd done enough of that when he'd basically accused her of being a slut the other day.)

Killian flicked a glance up to the clock at the top of his screen as his thumb hovered over her contact details. With every minute that passed, his mother would grow angrier over his absence. But deep down, he knew what he needed to do.

With another deep breath in and out, Killian hit call on Emma Swan's number and lifted the device to his ear. Her message had said she was about to start her next shift pattern, but he was hoping that she'd chosen to message him when she had some free time, and not right before she went on duty.

"Hello?"

"Emma, hi," he greeted softly, releasing a breath that he hadn't known he'd been holding. "It's Killian. I uh… I got your message," he explained lamely. Because now that she was on the other end of the line, he wasn't really sure why he'd called when he could have simply texted her later that evening. "How uh… how are you?"

"I'm okay," she replied carefully. "I um… I went for a growth scan the day you were there to open the water birthing centre."

"You did? How uh… how was that?" Killian had no idea what a growth scan was or why it was needed, but Emma didn't sound too worried so he was sure he didn't need to be either.

"Fine. The baby's fine. All of the measurements suggest that he or she is healthy and growing at the average rate for a baby of his or her gestation."

"Is it too soon to know what it is?" he asked, and then cringed a little as he heard the words echo around the room. Calling what could be his child _It _felt wrong.

"This was the scan where I could have found out, but I chose not to. I um… I've seen a lot, given my choice of career. The joy of finding out if you have a son or a daughter when that little bundle's placed in your arms is just incomparable. But if you decided that you wanted to know, I could make that happen for you," she offered. "It's one of the perks of being a midwife. I get unlimited access to free sonograms."

"It's fine," Killian chuckled. "If you wanna be surprised then I'm happy to be surprised with you. Besides… I suck at keeping secrets," he added ruefully. It wasn't completely true. Killian could keep a secret. The press just had a nasty way of finding them out and publishing them in the most salacious way possible. He was pretty sure someone in their camp was leaking information, but when he'd made the suggestion to his father, the King had brushed it off as absurd. "How um… how dangerous is this test?"

"It's only a small risk. Less than one percent of the women who go through with the procedure miscarry. But it's still a risk, you know?"

"Yeah," he agreed. Because while finding out that he was more than likely going to become a parent sometime in the next four to five months absolutely terrified him, a small part of himself had already started loving that child. "I um, I'll speak to a few people here and see what they can arrange for us. We have a wonderful medical team, so I'm sure you'll be in the best possible hands."

"Thank you."

For a moment, silence hung between the two of them over the line, and Killian was surprised to find that it wasn't all that uncomfortable. Speaking with Emma that afternoon and hearing about the baby she was carrying had helped the two of them to bond a little more, and to understand each other a little better.

"I uh… I should get back to lunch before my mother sends out a search party," he chuckled. "But I'll call you when I've had a chance to speak to my people. That way, we can make plans that work for us both."

"Thank you. I'd really appreciate that."

"Take care, Emma."

"You too, Your Highness."

She had disconnected the line before the words, "Call me Killian," could fall from his lips.

Killian sighed once more before he pocketed his phone and stood up to wash his hands. When he made his way back through to the dining room, everyone else was already present and glaring in his direction. Killian did his best to shake off their stares as he took his seat once more and asked, "So… what are we eating?"

* * *

Finding someone to collect the samples for the DNA test was proving to be a bigger problem than Killian had initially thought it would be.

He was definitely not prepared to reveal Emma's claim to his family just yet. His grandparents had been formidable when he'd been growing up, and his grandfather had always found a way to take care of any issues that had arisen before they could be leaked to the press and the public. While Killian didn't want to believe that any member of his family could be cruel enough to physically hurt another human being, he knew they were more than capable of hurting someone emotionally. And the last thing he wanted to do was ruin Emma Swan's life, which meant that his usual team of doctors, surgeons, and specialists were out of the question.

After a couple of hours spent on Google, Killian finally stepped out of his office with a few different numbers for specialists around the country. He was pretty sure that he could pay one of them a hefty sum of money in order to keep them quiet about the matter at hand.

But then he was faced with another issue.

If a member of the staff was leaking information to the press, Killian had no way of knowing who that person may or may not be. He had no idea what role they fulfilled or who they worked for, and because of that, he couldn't fully trust his own protection officers to keep his secret.

So Killian decided to conduct a small test.

The next morning, he pulled aside his chief of security to let the other man know that he had a new girlfriend and didn't want his father to find out about her until he knew where the relationship was going. Then he sat back and waited to see if any of the usual royal reporters would break the news of Prince Killian's secret girlfriend before the day was over.

* * *

Emma hadn't expected to hear from the prince again until he had more information for her about who would be responsible for taking the samples required for the DNA tests, and where he wanted them taken. But Prince Killian had managed to surprise her yet again.

After their first phone conversation, he'd found little excuses to message her throughout the days she spent on shift at the hospital. They would discuss small things, like him wondering what kind of holidays she could take, or asking how her shift patterns worked so that he could plan the tests around them. And whenever he'd finished exchanging pleasantries with her, he would always find a way to ask about the baby.

It had become something of a ritual between the two of them, so when Emma flopped down behind one of the computers after delivering twins three days later, she wasn't at all surprised to find the message on her phone from JONES.

_BabyCenter tells me the baby's about the length of a carrot right now. That can't be right, surely? I mean… carrots are quite small. And no offence to you, you looked beautiful when I saw you last week, but you had a bump there. Surely if the baby were only the length of a carrot there wouldn't be a bump just yet? _

Emma chuckled a little as she tried to picture the prince checking pregnancy websites for information on how the baby was developing. The poor guy clearly had a lot to learn about babies and pregnancy in general, before her March due date.

**There's a placenta in there too. That's how the baby gets food and oxygen while it's inside of me. And he or she needs plenty of space in there to keep growing. But don't worry, the baby will start getting bigger soon. And so will I. **

"What are you smiling about?" Ruby asked, dropping down into a seat beside her friend.

"I'm just happy to see my ladies so happy," Emma fibbed, as she tucked her phone away to pull up Miss Michael's records and begin the paperwork necessary for her transfer to a recovery ward.

"Ugh, I wish mine were. When I left the room, Sharron was still only five centimeters dilated and threatening her husband with divorce if he didn't get it out of her before the day was over."

"Ahh, the joys of labour," Emma giggled, before allowing a comfortable silence to settle between the two of them.

"So… are you gonna tell me whose message made you that happy?" Ruby eventually prodded.

"It's no one," Emma told her, hoping that she could play down the importance of her next statement. "I just uh… I think I found the father of my child."

"Holy shit, you did?"

Emma cast a quick look around the busy labour and delivery unit before she relaxed back into her seat when she realised that nobody seemed to have heard her friend's exclamation. "Yeah. But could you keep it down a little, please? I'm not entirely sure how he feels about everything right now."

Even as the words left her mouth, Emma knew they were a lie. Killian might have been asking for a paternity test but his little messages about the development of the baby, and all of his questions about the health of the two of them showed just how much he already cared. She was glad that she was one-hundred percent sure he was her baby's father, because she knew that if the test came back negative now, he'd have been gutted.

"So, why were you smiling at his message?" Ruby wondered.

"We're just um… we're just trying to get to know each other a little better," she explained vaguely. "I mean, we're gonna have a kid together soon. It seems only right that we at least know more about each other than just our names."

"I guess," Ruby agreed, but Emma could tell there was more her friend wanted to say, so she waited patiently until she did. "Just promise me something, Ems? Don't let him hurt you, okay? You were doing well without him in your life before. You don't _need _him in it now."

"I know," Emma agreed softly. Because she understood that while Prince Killian getting to know his child was the right thing for them to do, she wasn't expecting anything more from the man. He probably had a foreign princess waiting for him to propose to her in some exotic land. "I just want him to have a chance to know his child, Ruby. Nothing more than that."

Ruby nodded her head in understanding, and Emma could tell from the way her friend's eyes lingered over her face that she didn't quite believe what was being said.

But Emma knew the truth. This was not some fairytale where the prince and the common midwife he'd accidentally knocked-up during a one-night-stand would live happily ever after. And if her friend knew what she did, Ruby would understand why she wasn't getting her hopes up for anything more than polite chat with the father of her child.

* * *

When Emma finally sat down on the sofa in her small home later that evening, she was exhausted. Twelve-hour shifts were never easy, but twelve-hour shifts while five months pregnant were getting tough. She was starting to see why the other midwives on staff had laughed when she'd announced that she planned to work right up until the week before her due date.

That probably wasn't going to happen.

After slipping off her shoes and making herself a little more comfortable, she pulled out her phone to order some food and check her messages. There was one from her mother, confirming their lunch plans for the weekend, and another from JONES. Emma fired back a reply to her mother, assuring her that she would be at the house for ten on Sunday morning, as she always was when she wasn't working. Then she flicked over to her message thread with the prince. He'd sent her only two small words, but those two small words had Emma's heart hammering in her chest.

_Call me. _

For the longest moment, she was frozen in place as her mind raced with all of the possibilities that could result in his need to send her those two small words. Maybe he'd changed his mind. Maybe he'd told his parents about what had happened, and they no longer wanted their son involved with her. Maybe something had happened to the King or Queen. Or maybe something had happened to him. _Shit!_ What if he'd decided that he wanted sole custody of their child?

Emma contemplated deleting those two small words and pretending that she'd never received them. But she knew that she wouldn't be getting any sleep that evening if she did. Her mind would be too busy playing out every possible scenario for her in high definition. So with a slightly trembling hand, she pulled up his contact details and hit send before lifting the phone to her ear.

Prince Killian must have been expecting her call, as he answered before it could finish its first ring.

"Hi, Emma," he greeted. And if she'd expected his tone to convey anything, she was sorely mistaken. His voice sounded just as level and natural as it always had, when they'd interacted before.

"Hey," she croaked out. "I uh… I'm sorry it took me so long to call. I was working."

"I thought you might be," he chuckled. "That's why I didn't try to ring you. Do you have some time to talk?"

"Yeah. I just got home."

"Have you eaten?" he worried, as a touch of panic crept into the edges of his words. "I don't wanna keep you from food or anything. I mean, you're eating for two now. And you work so hard…"

"I've ordered in," she assured him. "It'll be here soon enough."

"Okay. Well, I uh… I just wanted to let you know that I'd found someone willing to take the samples. I thought that maybe we could hammer out some details tonight and get the appointment booked in as soon as possible. That way, neither of us are left in the dark for much longer."

"Oh," Emma sighed, as relief rushed through her system at his words. Of course that was all he wanted to talk to her about! "Sure. Who did you manage to find?"

"A specialist based close to you, actually. I um… I didn't want to use one of my own team, just in case they reported it all back to my father. So I had to do some digging around. He's promised to be incredibly discreet, and I've emailed over a non-disclosure agreement for signing before we make the appointment."

"Is there a reason you don't want your father to know?" Emma whispered across the line.

Deep down, she knew why the prince was planning on keeping this quiet. Killian wouldn't want his family to know that he'd knocked-up some random stranger after only one night together. That would ruin his reputation, and given that he was the son of the King, she could imagine that nobody would want _that _dirty little secret emerging anytime soon.

The more Emma thought about the future, the more the harsh reality of what she was likely to face began seeping in. She was a little ashamed to admit that she wasn't sure she liked the possibilities that were suddenly presenting themselves to her. Nobody wanted to go through life knowing they were someone else's dirty little secret. But that was exactly how both she and her child were likely to spend the rest of their days, now that Prince Killian knew about them.

And if he eventually did come clean, she'd be labeled as some kind of slut or whore for the rest of her life. No matter what she did or where she went, she'd always be known as the woman who'd had the prince's child out of wedlock.

"I just don't wanna say anything until we know for sure," he explained, startling her away from her rapidly spiraling thoughts. "My father would only end up demanding the same tests, and he probably wouldn't care for your comfort and schedule if he did. So I figured we could get them done first and then I'll work out a plan to explain everything to him when I know for sure that the baby's mine."

"You wanna tell him?" she asked carefully. Emma was a little stunned that her mind had immediately jumped to what appeared to be all the wrong conclusions about the father of her child. She wasn't used to being pleasantly surprised by the men she slept with. Normally, they turned out to be huge disappointments.

"Well, yeah… eventually," Killian chuckled. "I mean, he's gonna be a grandfather. I think he should know that. And it's gonna be hard sneaking you and a baby into Kensington Palace on a regular basis _without _him knowing about you both. I just um… I just want some time to come to terms with everything first and work out how best to tell him, before I do."

Emma relaxed back into her sofa at his words. While she didn't know Prince Killian well, something about him had inspired her trust and confidence in his actions. She was already feeling much better knowing that she wouldn't have to live her life as his dirty little secret, once the DNA test proved what she already knew to be true.

* * *

**Thank you for the incredible response you've given to this story so far. I'm still behind on my replies, thanks to my health (I assumed you guys would prefer the updates over replies) but please know I read and cherish every one of them. And I will get caught up again soon. **


	5. Chapter 4

"Good morning, Nana," Emma called out, as she slipped off her coat and hung it away in the closet by the front door before making her way through to the lounge.

Ruth gave her a critical once over from head-to-toe, her eyes lingering on Emma's rounded tummy before she grunted out a response. Of all the people in Emma's life, her Nana had been the one who most strongly disapproved of her pregnancy. While her parents had been concerned that their daughter was planning to raise her child alone, and wouldn't name the baby's father, Ruth had decided that the only explanation for it all was that her granddaughter was a harlot. And Emma had given up trying to change her mind.

"Yep. Still pregnant, Nana," she remarked, throwing the bitter old lady a smug smile.

After checking the room for her father, Emma slipped out and padded her way through to the kitchen. She wasn't at all surprised to find her mother already stood in front of the hob, stirring something that smelled incredible.

"Hey, Mum," she greeted, pressing a kiss to the other woman's cheek. "How're things?"

"Oh, everything here is fine," Mary assured her, as she turned down the gas and then span around to face her daughter. "Oh my Goodness! Look at you," she gushed, while both of her hands flew down to cover Emma's bump. "When did this happen?"

Although Emma had noticed her little bump developing a few weeks back, it had been easily hidden by her clothing at the time. But sometime in the last two weeks, she'd gone from looking like she might have just had a large meal to definitely looking pregnant. And she was pretty sure her bump had grown even more overnight.

"I dunno," she chuckled. "One minute I could see my feet and today, I'm really struggling to do that."

"How's baby doing in there?" Mary asked, as she turned her attention back to the bubbling saucepan once more.

"Baby's fine. Growing and developing just as any baby should."

"And did you find out the sex yet?"

"No, Mum. I still want it to be a surprise."

"You didn't even get them to write it down for me?" she pressed, turning to shoot her daughter her best wounded puppy-dog look.

"No, because then the whole town would know before I left here," Emma chuckled, as she eased herself down into a seat at the kitchen table. "You'll just have to wait until this little one's born to find out."

"Find out what?" David asked, as he made his way into the room to snag a piece of bacon from the pile that Mary had removed from the turkey she was roasting. His wife reached out to slap his hand away, but somehow he still managed to grab enough to offer a piece to his daughter.

"If we're having a grandson or a granddaughter," Mary explained. "Emma still doesn't want to know."

"Hey, you didn't know what I was gonna be," she argued. "And you still love me."

"That was the nineties, Darling. It wasn't so common back then to know what gender your baby was going to be. A lot of hospitals didn't even give you the option. If I were pregnant now, I'd want to know."

"And that's what makes us different."

Emma reached out to snag another slice of bacon from the pile before she pushed herself back to her feet. As she munched on the crispy salty treat, she made her way through to the lounge and the much more comfortable seats it had to offer. While her Nana wasn't the best company in the world, the old woman also didn't know how to work the television. So Emma would at least be able to find something to distract herself with, while they waited for dinner to be served.

* * *

After demolishing her mother's famous Sunday roast, Emma helped her father to rinse the china and load the dishwasher before the two of them went to rescue Mary from Nana Ruth's clutches. While Emma was currently the black sheep of the family, Mary had previously held that title. And when Emma wasn't around, she was usually the one on the receiving end of Ruth's jabs.

Emma had just lowered herself down to one of the seats in the lounge when her phone began to ring, and she sighed as she heaved herself back up to pull the device free from her pocket. A quick look down at the screen told her that this was definitely a call she should be taking, instead of declining. So she offered her parents a small smile of apology as she said, "Sorry. This is important. I'll be back in a moment."

When she finally had the bedroom door shut safely behind herself, she accepted the call and lifted the phone to her ear as she whispered, "Hello?"

"Emma? It's not a bad time, is it? I uh… I thought you wouldn't be working, but I can call back later if you are."

"It's fine," she assured the prince on the other end of the line. "I'm not working, I'm uh… I'm visiting my parents. What can I do for you?"

"I just wanted to let you know that I've worked a few things out here and that means I now have some free time coming up in the next couple of weeks. If you wanted me to, I could use that time to book the appointment with the specialist to have those samples collected?"

Emma dropped down onto the end of the bed and immediately regretted that decision. She knew that it would be difficult to get back up from the soft surface again when she was finished with her call. But she had a feeling that this wouldn't be a quick conversation, and she wanted to be comfortable for it.

The truth was that Emma had almost forgotten about the DNA test she'd agreed to have taken on her baby. Prince Killian had remained in touch ever since she'd contacted him to say that she was happy to go ahead with the procedure, but he rarely brought it up in conversation. In fact, most of the time he seemed more interested in getting to know a little more about her, and her experiences with delivering babies, than he did in scheduling the appointment. But she should have known that wouldn't last forever.

"Sure," she finally agreed. "I uh, I'm back at work tomorrow, but if we could arrange it for the end of the week, that would be perfect."

"Excellent. I'll give Dr. Birkenheim a call and make the appointment, then text you all of the details. He's based in the West Midlands, so that shouldn't be too difficult for you to get to, right?"

"Not at all."

Emma was a little touched that he'd picked a specialist so close to home for her. She knew that London must be crawling with people who could run the tests for them, and it was certainly a more convenient location for his team. Which meant that Prince Killian had likely chosen the West Midlands solely for her comfort and convenience, and she appreciated that more than she'd ever be able to express.

"I've heard of Dr. Birkenheim. His reputation is incredibly well respected here," she told the prince.

"I was informed that he was one of the best in the country. I want that for you. And for the baby," Killian rushed to add. "I'll um… I'll let you get back to your family now, Emma. Thanks again for agreeing to do this for me."

"You're welcome, Your Highness. Thank you for being so understanding," she replied, before disconnecting the line.

Emma spent another ten minutes sat on the end of the bed, reflecting upon how wonderful he'd been about the whole process, before she struggled up to her feet and headed back to the lounge.

* * *

With all of the details of the appointment set, Emma tried her hardest to push thoughts of the test aside and focus instead on her job. It helped that there was no shortage of babies waiting to be born in the East Midlands, and seeing a new mother holding her child for the very first time never failed to raise her spirits. But her working week seemed to pass in a blur, and before she knew it, Emma was hauling herself out of bed at eight _am _on her day off, to make the mid-morning appointment that Prince Killian had booked for her.

The drive was thankfully a rather short one, but the moment she pulled into the carpark, Emma began to wish that she'd asked one of her friends to come with her. She knew that the chances of there being complications with the procedure were slim, and that Dr. Birkenheim was one of the very best in his field. But she already loved her baby so much, and the thought of possibly losing that little person growing inside of her, had her sliding the keys back into the ignition once more.

It was the beep of her phone signalling an incoming message that stopped her from putting her car into reverse. She pulled the device out of her bag to see Prince Killian's name on the screen, and as she unlocked it to read his message, Emma couldn't stop the smile that was forming on her face.

_Good morning Emma and Baby Mango! Have you felt the little one move yet? BabyCenter says you should start feeling something around now, but not to worry if you haven't. _

Emma drew her keys out of the ignition and grabbed her bag before climbing out of the car. As scared as she was, Prince Killian deserved the reassurance this test would bring to him. Emma could already tell from his daily messages that he was growing attached to the idea of being a father, and she didn't want to let her fears stop him from embracing this wonderful time in her pregnancy. So after locking her vehicle and slipping her keys away, she tapped out a quick reply to him.

**Good Morning, Your Highness. Mangos are definitely better than carrots! I haven't felt the baby move yet, but I'm not worried. He/she will make sure I know they're in there soon enough. And you do remember that I'm a midwife, right? I know not to panic just yet. ;-) **

She hit send on the message and then took a deep breath in and out before heading for the entrance to the clinic. Emma dropped her phone into her bag as she made her way through the heavy glass doors and over to the white wooden desk in the middle of the room, where she gave the woman sat behind it her name. It wasn't until she was ushered through to an almost-empty waiting room that she realised the clinic had probably been closed for the morning just for her, as the only other person sitting in the space was a rather familiar face.

"Prince Killian?"

"Good morning, Emma," he greeted formally, folding the paper he'd been reading to set it down on one of the free seats beside him.

"I uh… what are you doing here?"

The prince pushed himself up from the chair and wiped his palms down the front of his jeans before making his way over to where she was stood. Emma had forgotten just how stunningly beautiful he was. In the harsh light of day, his features seemed even more striking than they had been in the darkened nightclub and under the terrible fluorescent lighting of the hospital.

"I thought you might want some company for this," he explained. "I um… I did some reading on the procedure and while it doesn't sound painful, the internet said it could be a little uncomfortable. So I uh… I thought that maybe you'd want to hold someone's hand for it… or something." He shrugged rather adorably as he finished speaking before finally letting his eyes drop down to take in Emma's more pronounced tummy.

"Yeah," she chuckled, rubbing a hand gently over it. "It's kinda popped since I last saw you."

The prince looked like he wanted to reach out and touch her bump but instead, he ended up clenching his hands into fists by his side. Emma hated that he was forcing himself to hold back, especially as she was so certain that he was the father of her child. But she could understand why he was doing it.

"Do you want to sit?" he asked instead, and she nodded her agreement as she allowed him to lead the way over to a pair of chairs along the back wall. "So uh… how was work?"

"It was good," she chuckled, because it was clearly obvious that the guy wasn't sure what he should be saying at that moment, and had reverted to small talk to try and ease the awkward tension in the room. "It's been busy, but that's never a bad thing. It's easier to get through twelve-hour shifts when you're always on the move."

"I get that," he agreed, and Emma cocked a disbelieving brow in his direction. "Believe it or not, I _have _put in long hours with the navy."

"So you were telling the truth about that? You're _actually_ a navy captain?"

Killian was a little offended that she had doubted those small snippets of truth he'd given to her during their first encounter. But given the enormous secret he'd kept from her, and just how little she appeared to know about him, he couldn't really find it in his heart to be that upset about it.

"Of course. You know, you could have Googled me to find that out."

"Why would I do that?" she asked him, turning a little awkwardly in her seat to face the prince. "I'd much rather hear about you from _you_, than from Wikipedia. I mean, we're going to have a child together. I don't want to tell my baby stories about his or her father that they can find on the internet. I want to tell them things that you want them to know. Things that you'vechosen to share with me."

Killian offered her a genuine smile as he relaxed back into his seat. He wasn't sure he'd ever been so grateful to hear that a woman hadn't bothered to Google him before, because if there was ever anyone he wanted to tell his side of things to, it was Emma Swan.

"Well, I'm most definitely a member of His Majesty's Royal Navy. When I finished school, I headed down to Raleigh to sign up for basic training there. Most of the men in my family are military men, so it's like a badge of honour to them. But they usually opt for the army or the RAF. I've just always preferred water to land. There's something far more relaxing about it, don't you think? Anyway, while my father was a little reluctant to let me go because he didn't like the idea of me being away from London so much, he didn't stop me from signing up. I completed basic training and then spent around six years working my way up the ranks down there. It was nice being away from London and the pressures of my family. But more than that, travelling with the navy has given me the kind of experiences I _never _would have gotten if I'd remained in the city. And I feel like it's those experiences that have helped to shape me into the man I am today. I mean… I managed to convince my superiors and my father to allow me to be deployed, and I've served two tours as a result of that. Being at sea for so long really helped me to find a kind of inner peace that had always been missing in my life before then."

Emma nodded her head to show that she was still listening, but when a slight blush began to colour the prince's cheeks, she tilted her head slightly as she wondered what he could possibly be thinking about to cause that kind of involuntary reaction.

"The um… the night I met you was my last hurrah before my latest deployment. It was only a short one, though. Eighteen weeks off the coast of the Falkland Isles. But it was nice to be back at sea," he told her, and Emma got the feeling that Prince Killian didn't often get an opportunity to tell other people about his own life, in his own words.

"I'm glad you got that chance to find yourself," she offered.

She didn't know much about what life was like in the navy, but Emma knew what it was like to be able to escape from underneath the weight of expectation your family put upon you. It was why she'd moved to Nottingham to study, and why she'd remained in the city when she'd graduated. She loved her parents, but being away from them (and able to do her own thing) without constantly having information fed back to them was just so freeing.

Of course, they probably now assumed _that _was the reason she'd let a complete stranger knock her up.

"Emma Swan?" an unfamiliar voice called out, and her head shot up to meet the eyes of the nurse hovering in another doorway.

"That would be me," she declared, pushing herself back to her feet.

Prince Killian followed her lead and stood as she did, but he waited for Emma to grab her bag and follow the nurse out of the waiting room before he trailed along behind the two of them. It was almost like he was trying to remain as discreet as he could, and Emma appreciated him a little more for that.

She wasn't at all surprised by the luxury of the room they were shown in to. While it contained most of the same supplies as the ones at the hospital she worked for, given that it was a private facility, Emma had been expecting everything to be newer and more opulent than Queens were able to offer.

The clinic certainly didn't disappoint in that respect.

She dropped her bag onto one of the leather seats along the wall before sliding up onto the bed in the middle of the room, that was conveniently sat next to a top-of-the-range ultrasound machine. Prince Killian seemed to hesitate a little as he looked between the chair by her side and the seat next to her bag.

"I thought you were planning to hold my hand," Emma teased gently, wiggling her shirt up to tuck it into her bra before she popped the button on her jeans. His eyes seemed to widen a little at the action as he made his way over to her side, but Emma wasn't going to start acting shy around him now. He'd already seen her naked. That was why they were there that morning. And if he wanted to be present for the birth of his child, he was going to see a whole hell of a lot more in the months to come.

"What uh… what happens now?" he asked, while the nurse fiddled with a few buttons on the computer beside Emma's head, and flicked through the paperwork in her hands.

"I'm just going to get everything set up and give Emma's tummy a clean, and then we'll get a local anaesthetic into her. That will start taking effect while we wait for Dr. Birkenheim to join us and when he does, we'll get started with the procedure. It shouldn't take too long."

Killian didn't look overly reassured by her words, but he offered the woman a tight smile of gratitude for at least answering his question. He watched in silence as she finally finished with Emma's notes and the machine, before she briefly left the room and returned with a small tray in her hands.

Emma didn't seem at all concerned about what was going on. She was happy to make small talk with the nurse while the other woman pulled on a pair of latex gloves and then turned her attention to cleaning her tummy.

"Relax," Emma chuckled, rolling her head around to face the prince just as the first needle pierce her skin. "This is the easy part."

"Says the woman who turned away the moment the needle came out."

"Hey! There are a lot of people in this country who don't like watching themselves being stuck with a needle," she protested fiercely. But he could see the humour dancing behind her eyes.

"Yeah, and how many of those are also midwives?"

"Oh… shut up."

The nurse chuckled a little at their banter before declaring, "That's all done. I'll go and let Dr. Birkenheim know that we're ready for him, and then I'll be back to start the ultrasound." She pulled off her gloves with a snap that made Killian jump and tossed them into the small tray she'd brought into the room with her, before leaving the two of them alone.

"Thank you for doing this for me," Killian whispered, when everything was silent once again. "It seems so much scarier when you're actually here than just reading about it online. And all I had to do was swab my cheek."

Emma's head rolled back around on the bed so that she could face him once again, and she offered the prince another small reassuring smile as she did. "I know this baby is yours. There isn't any way it couldn't be. But I get that given who you are and what you've been through before, you have no reason to take my word for that. I love this little life already and if this is what it'll take for you to let yourself love our baby too, then I'm happy to do it. Pregnancy isn't all sunshine and roses, and you won't get to experience this the way I will. But I don't want you to miss out on anything else because you're holding yourself back. So… you don't need to thank me for doing this, Your Highness. Because it's the right thing to do."

"Killian. It's just Killian. Like you said, we have a child together. He or she should at least grow up hearing their parents use each other's names instead of formal titles."

"Okay, _Killian_."

The prince's smile widened at the use of his given name, but before anyone could say anything else, the door was pushed open to allow an unfamiliar man in scrubs to enter the room.

* * *

**Thanks for reading and reviewing. **


	6. Chapter 5

"Your Highness, it's an absolute pleasure to meet you."

"And you, Dr. Birkenheim. I've heard many great things about your work."

Emma watched as Killian stood from his seat to shake her doctor's hand politely before he dropped back down again. He clearly wasn't there to make friends, and although he hadn't been rude or dismissive, his rigid posture was giving off a clear impression that he wasn't in the mood for games that morning. At that moment, he looked more like the Royal Navy Captain he'd claimed to be when they first met than he ever had before.

Dr. Birkenheim could clearly read the prince as well as Emma could, as he began pulling on a pair of latex gloves while one of his assistants held out a gown for him to slide his arms into. When he was appropriately dressed for the procedure he was about to conduct, Birkenheim approached the bed that Emma was resting on.

"I see that you're here today for a sample of amniotic fluid and placental tissue. I know you've probably done your homework on these issues, Your Highness, so you'll know the risks these procedures carry. But I need to make them absolutely clear to you before we begin today."

"I think you're directing that information to the wrong person in this room," Emma snapped, as all eyes dropped down to her. "_I'm _the one carrying this child. Not him. He's only getting these samples because _I've _agreed to it. And until you take them, I can refuse to go ahead with this procedure. So if you don't mind, I'd appreciate it if you stopped trying to impress the prince in the room and started doing your damned job."

"She's a midwife," Killian threw in, almost as if it would help to diffuse the situation. Emma knew that it wouldn't, but she appreciated that he was trying.

"Yes. Yes of course. I'm sorry, Miss Swan." Birkenheim took a moment to gather his composure before he spoke again. "You're aware that the procedures I'm about to perform carry with them a small chance of miscarriage, correct?"

"I am."

"And you still wish to proceed knowing that information?"

Emma took a few seconds longer to answer that question, but when she did, it was with a firm, "I do."

"Okay. The nurse here is going to get the ultrasound machine fired up so that we can see what we're doing while I prepare everything that I'll need to collect the samples. Try to relax," he instructed.

Emma tried to do just that, but she couldn't shake the tension that held her body tightly. Killian wished that he could do or say something that would help her, but everything that came to mind felt utterly inappropriate for their current situation.

The moment a loud whooshing noise began filling the room, he watched as Emma's body relaxed back into the bed, while she turned her head to stare at the nearest screen. Killian followed her gaze and inhaled sharply when his eyes landed on what was the unmistakable form of a grainy black and white image of a baby.

His baby.

_(He hoped.) _

"Is that…?" he asked unnecessarily.

"Yeah."

"It doesn't look much like a mango."

Emma snorted out a laugh as she agreed, "No. It doesn't."

"What's that noise?"

"The baby's heart," she explained, turning away from the screen to watch the prince, who was busy watching their baby. She was pretty sure their little one was sleeping, but there was something so awe-inspiring about getting the chance to see her child before he or she was born. She couldn't imagine what Killian must be going through at that moment, so she gave him as much time as he needed to process it all.

"Should it be so fast?"

"Yes. It's to aid the rapid growth that takes place at this stage of life. Don't worry, it's completely normal."

Killian finally pulled his eyes away to flick a glance over to the nurse who was controlling the ultrasound wand, and she nodded her head in agreement.

"Wow."

The nurse gave them both a few more moments just to watch their baby together before she began moving the wand once more, so that it would be out of Birkenheim's way, but still give him a good view of what was happening inside of Emma's womb.

"Okay, Miss Swan. I need you to keep as still as you possibly can for me."

Emma caught herself nodding her agreement before she realised what she was doing. As soon as she did, she cut off the motion and offered the doctor a soft,

"Okay," before she turned her head away from what she knew was coming.

She'd been fully expecting Prince Killian to want to watch the procedure, or even to keep his eyes fixed on the screen. So she was a little surprised to find his gaze locked on her face when her eyes met his.

"Are you sure about this?" he asked, his voice pitched low to keep their conversation between the two of them.

"Yes." If anything, seeing his reaction to their child had only made Emma more determined than ever before to give him that confirmation he so desperately needed. If this was how he behaved when he held himself back, she couldn't imagine how he would be with solid proof that he was going to be a father.

Or when he was handed his child for the very first time.

Emma had to bite down on her tongue to stop her eyes from tearing up at the mental image that sprang to mind from that thought.

Killian's hand moved slowly to pick up her own from where it rested on the bed between them, before he laced their fingers together in silent support. Emma could hear the doctor talking with his assistant behind her, and the tell-tale sound of sterile packaging being opened, but the prince's entire focus remained on her face.

"Okay, Miss Swan. I'm going to insert the first needle now," Birkenheim warned. "You might feel some pressure in the area, but remember to remain as still and calm as you can for me, please."

The anaesthetic did its job, preventing Emma from feeling any pain from the insertion, but she certainly felt the pressure as the long needle was pushed through her skin and into her womb.

"Does it hurt?" Killian worried, as he watched her brow crease a little with the move.

"No. It's just… odd," she eventually settled on, because the sensation was difficult to describe.

Killian nodded his head, either to show that he understood or that he'd heard her. Emma wasn't sure which. But the two of them lapsed into silence after that as the doctor carefully withdrew his first sample containing amniotic fluid.

While the procedure wasn't exactly painful, Emma felt a little discomfort as the needle was removed. It came with a sensation not too dissimilar to a sharp period pain, and she hissed a little at the unexpectedness of it.

"What? What's wrong?" the prince worried.

"Miss Swan's probably experiencing something similar to a painful cramp," the nurse explained, as Emma focused on breathing through the sensation and holding her body still. "It'll pass pretty quickly."

As soon as the needle was out she felt the cramp begin to die off, and her body relaxed back into the bed once more as it did. Emma hadn't realised that she'd been squeezing Killian's hand tightly throughout the process, but when she did, she offered him a sheepish smile and a small apology.

"It's fine," he assured her, waving away her concerns. "It's good practice for the big day, huh?"

"You wanna be there for the birth?" Emma couldn't remember seeing anything about a royal giving birth recently, but she was pretty sure men were usually forbidden from being in the same room as their wives while they delivered. Or was that rule different given that she was a commoner and not a princess?

"Of course. If the baby's mine, I don't wanna miss seeing my first child brought into the world," he explained. "I mean… as long as you want me there." The prince suddenly looked a little unsure of himself and it was quite an endearing look on him.

"Definitely," Emma promised. "Who else is going to hold my hand?"

The two of them chuckled a little at her words but it was cut short when the sounds of the second needle being prepared met their ears.

"Another?" Killian asked.

"We just need to take a sample of placental tissue now, Your Highness. Then the procedure will be complete."

"Okay."

Killian nodded his head once more but Emma was sure it was just his way of showing that he'd heard what was being said, as opposed to understanding what he was being told. Normally, the procedures were performed at different times during a woman's pregnancy. But most of those only took place because an abnormality had been discovered during a routine check-up. Emma knew that the NHS didn't like offering DNA tests at this stage of a baby's life, which is why she knew that there was very little information online about both procedures being used for that purpose.

The pressure on her tummy increased once more as a second long needle pierced her skin, and she squeezed down hard on Killian's hand when it did. He brought the one not currently being crushed in her grasp over to cover their joined hands before deciding to distract her with some small talk.

"So… what made you decide you wanted to be a midwife?"

"I uh… I just love babies and helping people. It felt like the perfect career choice."

"It definitely seems that way. Your boss had plenty of glowing words to say about you when I came to open the new birthing suite."

Emma flushed a little at the knowledge that her boss had been talking about her work to the man who had last seen her naked. But given everything that had happened in the last few months, she supposed that was probably low down on the list of embarrassing situations she'd found herself in.

"How many babies do you think you deliver in a year?"

"Uh… close to a fifty," she guessed. "There's always someone somewhere having a baby. I usually average one or two a week, depending on how fast a woman's labour is. Some days I can deliver three in a shift, but that's the exception and not the rule."

"Wow. I never realised how busy maternity wards could be."

"Yeah. Sadly, the NHS is seriously understaffed and underfunded. So we're usually rushed off our feet. There have uh… there have even been days where we've had to lock the doors and turn women in labour away, because we simply don't have space for them to safely deliver their child with us."

"Jesus Christ. Seriously?"

"You don't know this?" she asked, disbelief colouring her tone. Those kinds of headlines had featured in both local and national news outlets already that year.

"Pregnancy isn't really my area of speciality," he chuckled. "But they uh… we're also not supposed to get involved in politics, so I tend to stay away from that. I can't accidentally say something I'm not supposed to if I don't know anything about it." Killian knew that remaining ignorant wasn't the best way to handle his situation. But politics didn't interest him at all, so he'd never gone out of his way to find out that information.

"I get that. It's why I didn't recognise you," Emma explained. "Royalty isn't my area of speciality, and you guys rarely have a direct impact on my life. I've never really bothered to study who was and wasn't a part of your family. I just know your dad, as his picture's on all of our stamps and cash."

Killian barked out a loud laugh at that confession. Nobody had ever described their knowledge of his father that way before, but he imagined that it applied to a fair number of the population.

"Will you uh… where are you planning to give birth?" he asked. Because now that she'd told him about just how busy maternity wards could be, Killian was suddenly liking the idea of a private hospital with a place reserved for her to deliver his child.

"At my hospital. They won't turn me away. Don't worry."

He relaxed a little at her assurance, but still made a mental note to look into the best private maternity hospitals in the country. Just in case.

Emma felt that slight cramping sensation once more, which told her that the needle was being withdrawn from her tummy, and she sighed in relief when she heard it hit the tray. The ultrasound machine was still on and her baby's heart was still thumping strongly. It really was the best sound in the world.

"Okay, Miss Swan. That's both samples collected," Dr. Birkenheim announced, and she rolled her head around to face him. "His Royal Highness is taking them back with him for analysis, so I'll get them prepared for transportation and sign the last of the documentation that you've requested. Everything else is now your responsibility."

Emma nodded her head in understanding. She'd been expecting as much. Killian would want complete control over the samples, just so that nobody could be accused of tampering with them to fix the results. If she were in his position, she'd have demanded the same thing.

"As you probably already know, there's a chance that you may feel some cramping and there could be some spotting in the next couple of days," Birkenheim warned, as Emma nodded her head again. She'd read up on the procedure as thoroughly as she could, before she'd climbed into her car that morning. "That's all normal, but if it persists for over five days, give us a call and we'll get you back in to have a look at what's going on. If at any time in the next two weeks you experience persistent or severe pain; a temperature greater than thirty-eight degrees; chills or shivering; heavy vaginal bleeding; clear discharge; or contractions, then call us straight away. Okay?"

"I will do," she agreed.

Emma turned to look at Killian, who seemed to be a little horrified by the warning being issued to her, and squeezed his hand gently. She knew the usual spiel by now. She'd given it to enough patients herself. But she could understand why it would worry him.

"I'll leave you to get cleaned up. It was a pleasure to meet you both." Birkenheim extended his hand to shake Emma's first, and then the Prince's behind her. He carefully gathered up the two samples he'd collected and then left the room through the same door he'd entered. Emma could just make out a large man in a black suit following a step behind him, before the door closed completely.

The nurse took a little longer to finish cleaning everything up and while she did, Emma gently wiped away what was left of the gel on her tummy and buttoned up her jeans.

"You might be a little sore for a few days," the nurse added, as she watched Emma grimace when she swung her legs back over the side of the bed. "But it'll pass. Try and take it easy for the rest of the day."

"Thanks. I will."

The nurse gave one final sweeping glance around the room before she exited too, leaving Killian and Emma alone together once more.

"Okay," the prince declared after a moment, standing up to stretch out his cramped muscles.

Emma absolutely didn't watch as the emerald green sweater he was wearing rode up with his movements, showing off an enticing peek at the V of his hipbones. And her mind certainly didn't provide her with flashes of images from their first night together, and how those muscles would tense and relax as he moved over her. And inside of her.

"Are you hungry? I could eat. Do you want something to eat?" he asked.

"I uh… is that really such a good idea?" At the quirk of his brow, she clarified, "For us to be seen out together in public? Before you have those results."

"I was thinking of getting something we could eat in the back of the car," he replied sheepishly. "There _has _to be a Burger King around here somewhere."

Emma wasn't sure why she found the mental image of a prince eating from Burger King so funny, but she couldn't control the laugh that made its way up her chest and out of her mouth. Unfortunately, the movement pulled terribly on both of the injection sites in her tummy. She winced and her laughter cut off abruptly as her hand flew down to rub her bump tenderly.

"What's wrong?" Killian worried, stepping forward with his hand extended. Emma was certain that he was going to reach out and touch her bump, but at the last second, he dropped his arm back down to his side and clenched his fingers into a tight fist.

"I'm just a little sore," she explained. "And it's uh… It's fine, you know? You can touch it if you want to. The bump, I mean. You can touch the bump."

"I uh… maybe sometime soon?"

It was code for, _when I know the baby's mine, _and Emma knew it. But she couldn't begrudge him that. He'd already shown more than enough interest in her pregnancy for her to know that as soon as he had those results, he'd be the kind of hands-on father she'd always dreamed of having for her child.

"Let's get you home, shall we?" he offered instead. "My driver can take you back and save you a painful journey on the train."

"Why would I take the train? I drove myself here."

"Pregnant women can drive?"

The look on his face was so genuinely confused that Emma felt a little bad for the way she laughed at his comments. She had thought that piece of information was fairly common knowledge, but apparently, she needed to do more to prepare the prince for what was about to come.

"Yes. We're pregnant. Not dying."

"Well then… I'll drive you home. The nurse said you should be resting. Driving isn't resting."

"You're not insured to drive my car!" It was a lame excuse, but it was the first thing that popped into Emma's mind. She just couldn't picture Prince Killian sitting behind the wheel of her Vauxhall Corsa. She wasn't entirely sure he'd even fit behind it.

"If we get stopped I'll just explain to the officer on duty that the woman carrying my child just had surgery on said child, so I thought it best to drive her stubborn arse home. I'm sure they'll understand."

Killian didn't wait for Emma's response. Instead, he marched straight out of the private room and into the front lobby, where two men in fancy suits immediately stood to follow him out.

"I'm driving Miss Swan home, Jacob. You can follow behind us," he declared, as he hurried down the steps and over to the small red Corsa that was the only vehicle parked in the lot.

Emma wasn't sure which one of the men in black was named Jacob, but she heard a clear and firm, "Yes, Your Highness," in response to Killian's words, as both men followed after their charge.

* * *

**Thanks for sticking with me during this difficult period in my life. **


	7. Chapter 6

Three-to-five days, Prince Killian had said. It would take three-to-five days for him to get the results back from the DNA test.

While he still messaged on an almost daily basis, he'd mentioned absolutely nothing about those results four days after the samples had been collected, and Emma was going slightly crazy waiting for him to say something. She'd even woken the night before from a dream in which they'd somehow come back negative and he'd accused her of trying to manipulate him into taking responsibility for her child.

It was ridiculous, Emma knew that. He was the only man she'd had sex with in over a year. There was no way her baby's father could be anyone else. But the longer he kept her waiting on those results, the more nervous she became.

She was grateful when it was finally time to head back to work. While the shifts might have been brutal with her growing bump getting in the way, they at least kept her mind from wandering to Prince Killian and dwelling over what he was doing.

Most of the time.

"What's up?" Ashley asked, as she and Ruby dropped into the seats next to their friend in the small café onsite, during their second shift of the week.

"What do royals do when they're not working?" Emma asked, hoping that the randomness of her question would be written off as just that – a random musing.

"I uh… I have no idea," Ashley chuckled. "But I'm sure if you're _that _worried about it you could always find the answer online."

Emma didn't really want to Google the question. It felt far too much like snooping. But she wasn't sure how Killian would feel if she messaged to ask him. While he'd asked plenty about her life since they'd exchanged details, Emma wasn't entirely sure how much he _could _talk about his. There was probably some kind of protocol in place to prevent that, for national security reasons.

"They do lots of different engagements around the country," Ruby threw in. "Sometimes out of the country too. You can find all of the pictures on the newspaper websites or the Royal Family's official twitter accounts." When her friends turned startled eyes her way, Ruby simply shrugged off their questioning gazes. "What? The Prince of Wales is hot. I'm not gonna apologise for that."

"Which one's the Prince of Wales?" Emma had never heard anyone refer to Killian that way before. But until recently she hadn't even known his name, so she supposed he could be known by a different title.

"The eldest. He's the one that will be king when their father passes away."

So… not Killian.

He hadn't mentioned his family often during their conversations, but occasionally Killian would slip in something about his older brother. And as he'd never mentioned a younger sibling, Emma had assumed that there were only the two of them.

She was busy trying to picture a slightly older version of Killian when a peculiar fluttering sensation in her abdomen startled her out of her thoughts. It was one that she'd heard about many times before, but had never had the chance to experience for herself.

Until now.

"Oh," she squeaked out, when she realised what it was. Her hand dropped down to her tummy, rubbing soft circles into the place she'd felt the movement as she tried to coax her baby into repeating the action.

"Is the baby moving?" Ashley asked, with a knowing smile.

"Yeah. It feels… odd. Like I kinda knew what to expect, given the job, but feeling it for myself is something else."

"Go on then, how does it feel?" Ashley, like the rest of her fellow midwives, had heard the sensation described in many different ways before. And much like Emma, she hadn't yet had the chance to experience it for herself.

"Like… like there's this wave just rolling around in my tummy," Emma explained vaguely. She'd heard expectant mothers describe it as a fluttering, or like popping bubbles, and even once as that sensation of momentary-weightlessness on a rollercoaster. Most women described the feeling in vastly different ways. But now that she knew what was happening, she could fully understand why. It definitely didn't feel like a kick, but the movement didn't feel entirely natural either.

"I can't wait until the baby's big enough for us to feel it too," Ruby mumbled dejectedly.

"With the way this pregnancy's going, that'll happen sooner than you think."

"Speaking of time flying, we need to get up to the unit," Ashley reminded them both. "Handover starts in ten minutes."

Emma deliberately took a little longer than her friends to finish her decaffeinated coffee and gather her things. She told them both to go on ahead of her as she did, knowing that they were frustrated by her dawdling. And when they finally decided to start moving, it gave her the perfect opportunity to fire off a message to Killian to let him know about what she'd just felt.

* * *

The first thing Killian did when he climbed back into the Range Rover was pull out his phone and switch it on.

Since his return from the Falkland Isles, his father had kept him busy with engagement after engagement. It was Brennan's way of showing the world that his son was still a full-time working royal, even if he did have a successful navy career to balance with it. But Killian didn't mind too much. Most of the engagements were for his own patronages. Patronages he'd picked because of a personal interest in them, which meant that he was usually busy meeting some of the best and most interesting people in the country.

But that week, his mind really wasn't on the matters at hand.

After personally dropping off the DNA samples with the laboratory he'd found, he'd been told to expect the results before the end of the week. And with every day that passed, Killian became more and more desperate for the truth.

Emma had been wonderful so far. Not only had she agreed to the invasive tests that carried a small risk to her child, but she'd also entertained all of his questions and random comments about her pregnancy too. And she'd done it all without any complaints.

He couldn't imagine how difficult it must have been for her. Twelve-hour shifts were tough enough for him as it was, and he didn't have to deal with screaming women bringing new life into the world. And yet, Emma somehow managed to do it all whilst growing a child inside of her body.

_His child. _

The more he'd gotten to know Emma Swan, the more Killian knew it to be true. The two of them had connected that night they'd first met, and it was a connection they still shared now. He'd known that first evening she'd been telling the truth when she'd said she wasn't _that_ kind of girl. Just as he knew she was being truthful when she assured him it was _his_ child she was carrying.

The DNA test had become more of a formality than a necessity. Killian knew he'd need it when he eventually confronted his father with the news. Brennan would probably demand another of his own at the time, but until their child was born, his father could make do with the one Killian would already have. He knew that no matter how many tests they took, the results would always be the same. Emma Swan was having his child.

When the small device in his hand had finished loading, Killian tapped in his passcode and then waited for his notifications to come through. There were always dozens of them. His assistants and aides sending reminders of what was left in his calendar, his brother sending him some kind of meme he'd found on the internet and thought was hilarious, and friends that wanted to know when he was free so they could all party again. But the message he was most hoping to see was right at the top of his list.

**I felt the baby move for the first time today. It was… odd. Kind of like a wave under my tummy. But it was so incredible too. I can't wait until Baby Mango's big enough for you to be able to feel him/her. X**

Killian couldn't wait to feel that movement either. It was absolute proof that a life was growing inside of Emma, and it must have felt amazing for her to experience. It wasn't really something he'd given much thought to until a couple of months ago. But now… the opportunity to feel his baby kicking inside of Emma was the one idea he could never seem to shake whenever he turned the lights off at night.

_I'm so glad little Mango's finally making his/her presence known to you. I hope that means you'll have some company for your shift tonight. Take it easy and make sure you eat something. _

Emma had confided to him before that the NHS was often so understaffed that when one of their ladies was in active labour, the midwives would skip their breaks to stay close to her. Women felt more comfortable seeing the same face throughout their delivery, and the midwives wanted to give them that comfort. But given that she was five months into her pregnancy, the last thing Killian wanted was a call saying that Emma had fainted at work due to exhaustion or dehydration.

**I came in early and ate before my shift. But I'll make sure I sneak in a few doughnuts before I handover tomorrow morning. How was your day? **

Killian chuckled a little as he popped open the button on his suit jacket and relaxed further back into the leather of his seat. Emma hadn't mentioned a craving yet, but she'd mentioned doughnuts every day for the last three days. He assumed that was probably it, and she likely hadn't put the pieces together herself just yet.

_Good! Have one for me. My day was okay. I spent my morning at a primary school in Northampton, and I've just finished a late meeting in the city. I'm on my way home now._

While he waited for Emma's reply, Killian flicked away from their messages to check on the others that he'd received. As he expected, he had two reminders for what had been scheduled for him for the following day, and a message from his old pal Robin, asking if he fancied going clubbing that weekend. Killian dismissed the reminders without bothering to reply (his private secretary never expected a response anyway). He then took a moment to type out a quick message for Robin, explaining that his father was keeping him busy over the weekend so he wouldn't be able to join the guys just yet. When he was finished, he set the phone down on the seat beside himself as he waited for Emma's response to come through.

* * *

Emma was halfway into her third day on shift for the week and had gotten lucky. Mrs. Brown wasn't anywhere near close to delivering, so she had taken the opportunity to sneak in a break and eat the box of doughnuts she'd bought that morning. Emma never liked to go too far. Labour could be unpredictable at the best of times, so she didn't want to wander off in case things started moving faster for Mrs. Brown. Which was how she found herself sat at the midwives' station at a little after one _am_, scrolling through the Kensington Palace Twitter feed as she munched on her third sugar ring doughnut of the day.

Killian had called when she'd gotten home the day before, to let her know that he was being sent to France for an engagement that would last two days. He hadn't said much about it, though. He preferred talking about the baby and how much movement Emma was feeling from their little one. But it had been enough to pique her curiosity.

While she'd been too exhausted to do much more than sleep after his call, and too busy at work the next evening to search for more details, her quiet shift had finally given her the opportunity to look for more information. The moment she found it, however, she kind of wished she hadn't!

Killian's first engagement of the day had apparently been a much-hyped meeting with the new French President, and he'd been dressed in a sharp navy suit for the occasion. While he'd been smartly dressed every time she'd seen the man, she'd never seen him in a three-piece suit and tie before.

Flashes of his love for her thigh-high boots played through her mind on a loop, making Emma shift uncomfortably in her seat. She wondered if, in an alternate reality where they could be together, he'd entertain her love for him wearing a tie the same way she'd indulged his love for her boots.

And that wasn't even the worst of it.

What had started as harmless curiosity had quickly turned into an obsession as Emma scrolled through each of the images posted to the official twitter account. There were countless pictures of Killian, and who she now knew was his older brother, Liam, in various different places for their official engagements. Most of the time the princes wore suits, or at least a shirt and jacket combination. But there were the odd pictures of them both looking more relaxed with soft dark sweaters pulled over light coloured shirts. And buried away in the middle of the feed, around the time of Remembrance Day, was a selection of images of both men in full military dress uniforms.

Emma swallowed hard as she clicked on each one in turn, enlarging the pictures until they filled her computer screen. She hadn't known that she had a thing for military uniforms… until she'd seen Prince Killian in one.

Killian and Liam's were always different. She assumed that was due to the different positions they held. Killian was often seen in a pair of perfectly pressed black trousers, a white dress shirt, and a simple black tie. Over this, he would wear a thick black double-breasted coat with two rows of large gold buttons. The coat had golden patches stitched onto the shoulders and for Remembrance Day, he would pin a poppy over his heart. His white peaked hat was trimmed in black leather with gold braiding on the brim, and a golden badge had been sewn into the centre. And to complete his look, there was a sword hanging from his left hip.

It was a good look for the prince, and one that Emma hadn't _ever_ thought would turn her on.

"Ugh, I feel ya," Ruby mumbled, as she stretched over the counter to check out what had been making her friend shift so awkwardly in her seat. "Is there anything sexier than men in uniform?"

"Men in nothing at all?"

Emma wasn't entirely sure where that thought had come from, but with it came a wonderful array of images from her night with Prince Killian. His firm broad chest dusted with dark hair, that had been surprisingly soft when she'd run her fingers through it. The way the muscles in his back had flexed with every move he'd made. And his thick powerful thighs that drove himself into her with strong confident strokes.

_Yep, she'd definitely entered that horny stage of her pregnancy. _

"When you finish drooling over hot servicemen, would you mind giving me a hand?" Ruby asked. "Laura in room six has a posterior cervix. I wanna try and see if we can pull it forward a little to encourage her labour to start. But she's gonna need a hand to hold."

Emma was already cringing at the thought of that process as she began logging out of Twitter and off the hospital network. Every woman who'd ever had to have that procedure performed had all said the same thing - It felt like they were being punched in the crotch. Repeatedly.

"I'm on my way now," she assured her friend.

While some of their ladies always insisted on going the distance alone, especially if they were single mothers, experience had taught the midwives that nobody should _ever _have to brave that procedure without a hand to hold.

* * *

When Emma finally arrived home after her last shift of the week, her first instinct was to curl up in bed and sleep until the following afternoon. But she'd been working for the NHS long enough to know that if she did that, she'd never achieve anything during her days off. So after setting an alarm for eleven _am, _she took a quick nap to keep herself going.

She'd been working on slowly clearing out the clutter inside of her spare room, to make space for the baby's nursery. So when she woke a little later that morning, she set to work on sorting through the next pile of stuff inside of it. Everything in good condition she took pictures of to sell online, hoping the funds would help her pay for all of the new furniture she would need. She sorted the rest into piles to donate, piles to recycle, and piles to bin. It was a tedious task but every day a little more space was made, and her vision of her baby's nursery became more of a reality.

Prince Killian had been oddly quiet while he was out of the country. At first, Emma had assumed it was because he was so busy with work. But the longer he went without messaging her, the more she began to worry that maybe the DNA tests had thrown up a problem.

In an attempt to push the prince out of her mind, she made her way through to the bathroom for a quick shower so that she could head out and pick up some groceries. The task was one she always hated doing, but she didn't like relying on strangers to pick her food for her when she ordered online. It often left her with fresh produce that needed eating within two days, and nothing else for the rest of the week.

After stopping for some decaf coffee and an all-day breakfast in the small café attached to the store, Emma made her way methodically up and down the aisles, picking things she knew she could cook in bulk and freeze, for when she returned to work. When she'd first started working she'd thought she'd have enough time and energy to cook herself fresh meals every day. But it had taken her less than a month to realise how wrong she'd been. And less than a week later she'd begun to hate the sight of takeaway containers. So her mother had suggested bulk cooking to save her sanity. It wasn't quite the same as eating a freshly prepared meal, but it was the best of her available options.

Normally, when she was grocery shopping, Emma would skip over the baby and toddler aisles in the store. They had never contained items she needed before and she'd been a midwife long enough to know that buying before the second trimester began could result in heartbreak for some women. So she'd continued to avoid them all. But that afternoon, with her little Mango busy making waves inside of her, Emma slowly made her way down the first aisle to pick up a package of newborn nappies. Nappies were expensive, she told herself. It made sense to start spreading the cost of them early.

But her next purchase couldn't be explained away so rationally. The small aisle of clothing didn't contain the biggest range in the world but it held enough to draw her attention to a tiny onesie hanging on the wall. The white cotton had the words, "I love my daddy," printed on it, along with some blue sailboats and silver anchors. She knew it was being marketed at little boys, but Emma still found herself adding it to her trolley. Hopefully, with Killian being a navy man, he'd appreciate the thought behind its design even if they had a little girl.

* * *

Emma startled as she woke, her head snapping up from where it had dropped awkwardly to one side. She'd fallen asleep on her sofa while attempting to watch the latest episode of _The Walking Dead_. But something had broken through to her subconscious and told her to wake immediately.

She turned her head a little as she hit the mute button on the remote. It was probably just her cat, Sherlock. He was always knocking things over in the kitchen.

Except, the tiny yawn to her left told her he had been sleeping peacefully by her feet.

The silence was suddenly shattered by the sound of someone banging on her front door, and Emma jumped a little in surprise. She hadn't been expecting visitors that evening.

"Stay here," she whispered to her cat, before grabbing her phone and heading out into the hallway. The moment she pressed her eye to the little peephole in the middle of her door, her entire body relaxed and she quickly flicked the lock to pull it open.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, as she dropped a hand down to pinch her thigh. It hurt like hell, so she assumed she wasn't still dreaming.

A slightly wet Prince Killian was stood on her doorstep, staring back at her with a look that she could only describe as reverential.

"I'm gonna be a dad," he mumbled, flicking a glance down to the soggy piece of paper held tightly in his fist, before he brought his eyes up to settle on the rounded curve of her tummy. "I'm gonna be a dad."

"You got the results back!"

Killian nodded his head sharply but didn't say anything else.

"You should come in. It's freezing out there." Emma chuckled nervously and then took a step back to allow him to pass her. The prince still seemed to hesitate for a long moment before finally taking a step over her threshold, and then another to put himself firmly in the middle of the hall.

Before she closed the door behind him, Emma poked her head outside to have a good look up and down her street. She wasn't entirely sure what she thought she'd find there. They never used that golden carriage thingy outside of London.

* * *

**The closest I can get to an image of Killian's uniform here is one of Vice-Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence (Princess Anne's husband), on Remembrance Day, with the Duchess of Cambridge. But he is a few ranks above Killian.**

**Thanks for reading and reviewing.**

**For those of you who don't know, I'm going through some difficult times personally at the moment both with my health and in my private life, so I'm afraid updates will remain sporadic for the time being because I just don't have the time or energy to dedicate to my fandom life right now.**


	8. Chapter 7

"Go on through," Emma encouraged, as she turned away from the front door to find Killian lingering awkwardly in the middle of her hall. She'd always thought of her house as being fairly modest in size, perfect for a single, working woman. But with Prince Killian standing in her lounge, his eyes assessing the pictures decorating her walls, it felt suffocatingly small.

"Can I uh… can I get you anything?" she offered.

Killian shook his head no but still wouldn't say anything. Emma was pretty sure he was in shock, so she didn't want to do anything to startle him.

"You have a cat," were the first words to leave his mouth, when he eventually spoke again. She wasn't sure for how long they had been standing awkwardly, but she noticed the television show that was airing had come to an end, and another had begun in that time.

"Yeah, his name's Sherlock," she explained. "He's not a terribly affectionate cat but he has his moments."

Killian dropped down into the seat beside the animal and reached out to scratch the top of Sherlock's head with his free hand. He kept the results from the DNA test held firmly in his other.

"You know I uh… I've never had a pet before," he mumbled quietly. "I'm glad our baby will get to grow up with Sherlock around." He finally lifted his head to meet Emma's gaze, but the emotion behind his eyes almost floored her. Emma had never seen someone look that awestruck before. And given her career, that was certainly saying something.

"I knew," he whispered. "Deep down, I knew. I could feel it in my gut. I knew you weren't lying to me. But… having it written there, in black and white… I didn't expect it to feel so real."

"I get that." Emma picked up the sleeping cat and deposited him into the armchair along the back wall of her small lounge, before taking a seat beside the prince. "My period's been regular for well over a decade now, so even though I told myself that I couldn't be pregnant - that we had used a condom - I knew what was happening the moment that first day came and went without a sign of it. But actually seeing the word 'pregnant' displayed on the test was a whole other level of understanding. And then at my first scan, seeing little Mango inside of me…" She turned her attention down to her rounded stomach and rubbed a gentle hand over the space where she'd last felt her baby move. "That was what made it feel real to me."

Killian nodded his understanding but kept his eyes focused on the small movement of Emma's hand. He looked like he wanted nothing more than to reach out and feel it for himself, but he didn't. And it took Emma a lot longer than it should have to realise that it was his gentlemanly nature holding him back, not his doubts about their child's paternity. He wasn't going to do anything until she told him that it was okay to do so.

"You can touch me. The bump, I mean. You can touch the bump," she chuckled. "It's okay to do so. This baby's just as much yours as it is mine."

"I don't want to do something that makes you uncomfortable."

"You won't," she assured him, as she reached for his hand and placed it over the centre of her tummy.

For a moment, the two of them sat in silence as Killian slid his hand gently over the bump that his child was growing inside of. But when he finally met her eyes once more, Emma gasped at the look of wonderment filling them.

"It's firm," he stated. "I wasn't expecting it to be so firm."

"Sometimes it's not," she explained patiently. "I guess it depends on how I'm sitting or where the baby's resting. But it changes a lot."

"And that's normal?"

Emma could hear the concern behind Killian's words so she softened her expression as best she could. It was easy to forget that the prince was completely out of his comfort zone right now, and she wanted him to be at ease with every stage of her pregnancy. "It's perfectly normal. Every woman's different and so is every pregnancy. I learned pretty early into my job that no two women are ever alike in this area."

"I'll try and keep that in mind." He kept his hand on her bump for a moment longer, gently rubbing the area reverently before he added, "I can't wait until I can feel her kicking in there."

"Her?"

"Oh, um… most of the sites I've been reading tend to use 'she' when they talk about babies. I guess it rubbed off on me," he chuckled, finally pulling his hand away. "And before you ask, as long as the baby's happy and healthy, I don't have a preference for gender. Now, uh… Do you um… do you need anything at all? For the baby, I mean? I want to help. I want to contribute equally here."

"Not just yet. I'm only twenty-four weeks, so I'm just coming to the end of my second trimester. But maybe we could uh… maybe we could shop together for the big stuff – Online? I did get a few things today when I went shopping, but it was only a pack of nappies and a onesie that made me think of you."

"It did?"

Emma pushed herself back to her feet and made her way through to the kitchen. She grabbed the bag with her newest purchase from the countertop she'd set it on, and then turned to head back to the lounge. But before she could take more than two steps, the pictures on her fridge caught her eye. She quickly snatched them up and cut off the bottom two before sliding them into a blank envelope, and then made her way back to where the prince was waiting for her.

"I know it's for a little boy, but I thought with you being the baby's dad, it would be just as cute on a little girl," she explained, as she placed the bag into his lap.

Killian pulled open the plastic and then tugged the cotton garment free. His eyes lit up at the tiny blue sailboats and the silver anchors stitched onto it, but he was holding the onesie back-to-front.

"Turn it around," Emma instructed.

When he did, she could have sworn that she saw tears form at the corners of his eyes as he whispered the words, "I love my daddy."

"Is it too soon?"

"No. No, not at all. It's… it's perfect, Emma. Thank you."

Killian took a moment just to allow the knowledge that he was going to be a dad to fill him once more. It was still such a surreal concept that sometimes he woke in the middle of the night worrying that he'd dreamed the entire thing. When he finally had his emotions back under control, he turned to face the mother of his child once more as he laid the onesie over his thighs. "It's so small. Are babies really this small?"

"Some are even smaller. Some are born bigger. But yeah, the average is about that size."

"Wow. I can't believe I'm going to be partially responsible for someone this tiny in a few months' time. That just… does it ever get easier to believe?"

"I don't think it ever really sinks in until someone puts your child into your arms. But it will get easier. Maybe uh… maybe these will help?" She offered the small envelope to him and Killian took it from her curiously. When he opened it up and pulled out the ultrasound pictures that had been tucked inside, those tears were back once more as he stroked a tender finger over the clear image of his child.

"You can keep those. I have more."

Emma wasn't sure if Killian could hear her at that moment. He looked just as amazed with the pictures as he had been when he'd joined her for the tests, and had been given the chance to see the ultrasound in action.

"Thank you," he eventually croaked out, pulling his wallet from his pocket to tuck the images safely inside before he slid it away once more. "Thank you, Emma. I uh… I know this probably wasn't how either of us thought we'd have our first child but… I'm glad I'm doing this with you."

"Me too. I um… I still can't believe you want to be there for the birth. I thought royal men were never present for that kind of thing."

"Ha. That used to be true," he agreed, reaching up to scratch behind his right ear. "My grandfather was actually the first to break that tradition when my aunt was born. But that was an accident. He didn't realise my grandmother was in labour, so when he walked into the bedroom after a game of squash, she grabbed his hand and wouldn't let go."

"Seriously? That's an incredible story," Emma chuckled. She shifted a little on the sofa until her back was resting against the arm so that she could see Killian more clearly.

"Yeah. She used to love telling that story when she was alive. But since then, every expectant father has joined his wife for the birth of their children. And I certainly don't want to be the first to buck this new tradition."

"At least Nottingham's not too far from London for you."

"London would be even closer," he suggested carefully. "You could come and stay with me before the baby's born and have your pick of hospitals to deliver in. We have the best medical teams working for us, so you'd be in safe hands. _Both _of you would be," he added, as he reached out to rest his palm over her bump once more.

"Thank you, but I kind of had my heart set on this new water birthing centre we have."

"You wanna give birth underwater?" Killian looked a little horrified at the idea.

"Not underwater," she chuckled. "_In_ the water. There's a big difference."

"I'm probably gonna sound really stupid right now but won't the baby drown in that situation?"

"No." Emma's chuckles had become full-blown giggles, and Killian was certain that it was the most beautiful sound in the world. "As long as the baby's still connected to the placenta it'll get all of the oxygen it needs from me. That's the way our little Mango's currently breathing inside of me. While the baby stays under the water, his or her breathing reflex won't trigger, so it'll be a calmer birth for everyone involved. And the warm water itself will help me to feel more comfortable during the delivery. Did someone not explain all of this to you when you came to open the unit?"

"Uh…" Killian licked at the back of his teeth as he considered whether he should lie to Emma about what had happened, or tell her the truth. In the end, he settled on the truth, given how open and honest she'd been with him so far. "I was a little distracted that day. When I was handed the assignment, all I could think about was this beautiful blonde I'd met the last time I'd been in the city. And then when I finally saw you again, I was just too stunned to really process anything else happening around me."

Emma blushed a little under his compliment. She wasn't feeling particularly beautiful at that moment. She hadn't bothered doing anything with her hair and she wasn't wearing any makeup. And while she loved her little baby bump, she was starting to feel like she'd swallowed a beachball that was inflating more with every day that passed. "I'm sorry you didn't get to see that beautiful blonde tonight."

Killian took a chance and reached out to tilt Emma's face up so that her eyes would meet his. He wanted her to see the truth behind the words he was about to speak, because he wanted her to believe them too. "Emma, you're even more beautiful to me today, carrying our child, than you were when I first met you."

Emma wasn't really sure how to process his sweet words, so she did the only thing that felt natural at that moment and leaned forward to press her lips to his.

Much like the first night they'd spent together, there was no soft and sweet to ease them into things. They'd been apart for far too long, aching to be in each other's arms. Soft and sweet was never going to cut it. Killian's hands were running over her thighs and up the sides of her body, gently grazing the curve of her bump before he brought them up to tangle his fingers in her hair. Emma's own hands were clutching at the prince's shoulders, pulling his body as close to hers as they could get, so that she could deepen their kiss.

"Bed," Killian gasped out, when Emma's hands slipped down his chest to begin pulling his shirt free from the jeans he was wearing, so that she could slide her hands up and over the muscles in his back. "Let's do this in a bed, where you'll be more comfortable." His eyes dropped down to her rounded tummy and it didn't take him long to realise that a few of the positions they'd used before certainly weren't going to work for them now.

Emma was reluctant to let go of him now that she had permission to fully explore his body once more. Her hormones seemed to be in overdrive because she'd never felt as aroused as she did at that moment. But her back was already beginning to twinge at the way she'd had to contort herself to reach the prince, and she didn't want to have to end things early. So with a reluctant sigh, she pressed another sucking kiss to his collarbone before standing and reaching for the remote to flick off the television.

The moment the screen went dark, Killian pulled the device from her hand and tossed it onto the cushion she'd just been sitting on. He slid his hand into hers and gently tugged her over to the lounge door. Even though it wasn't his house, he knew he'd be able to find Emma's bedroom easily enough, and she was more than happy to let him lead.

Killian had barely crossed the threshold to the room when he turned around to pull her back into his arms, his lips dropping down to cover hers. He forced himself to slow his kisses when his hands skimmed down Emma's sides, brushing lightly over the swell of her breasts and then the curve of her bump. He wanted to take his time with her, to show Emma that the night they'd spent together had been real, and wasn't just an alcohol-fuelled fuck. He wanted to show her that he still felt that connection to her now, and that he believed there could be something special between them. Something incredible.

But the last thing he wanted to do was hurt either her or their child.

With slightly trembling hands, Killian pushed the t-shirt Emma was wearing up the new curves of her body before pulling it over her head. Her hair tumbled down her back in a wave of golden curls and he briefly wondered if their daughter would inherit those from her mother.

_God he hoped she would. _

Killian reached behind him to pull the sweater he was wearing over his head before his hands fell to her hips. Between soft kisses, he walked Emma back until her legs met the edge of the bed, and then reached down to gently lift her onto the mattress.

"Take your jeans off," he told her, as his own hands fell to the belt around his waist. In an ideal world, he'd take his time stripping Emma bare, making the most of every opportunity it presented to him. But she was pregnant with his child, and the last thing he wanted to do was pull her around in a haze of lust and passion.

Emma complied with his command instantly, wiggling the tight denim over her bump and down to her knees, before he helped tug the garment free of her legs. When she was left in nothing but her underwear, she pulled herself up the bed until she could slide under the duvet. Killian took a moment just to commit that image of her to his mind before he joined her.

"I don't want to hurt you," he whispered. One of his hands came up to cup her cheek as he leaned down to brush her lips with his. "I don't wanna hurt either of you. So tell me if I do."

"You won't," Emma promised him, covering his hand with her own. "We uh… we just might have to get a little creative. That's all."

Killian hummed as she turned to kiss the inside of his wrist. But when his eyes met hers once more, they were bright with mischief. "I do like the sound of that," he teased, pulling her in closer to kiss her more deeply.

Even with Emma's leg hitched over his hip, the bump between the two of them made things a little awkward. Killian didn't want to lean into it and end up hurting his baby, but he wanted to kiss the mother of his child the way he'd dreamed of doing since he'd last fallen asleep with her in his arms.

When her hand slipped between their bodies to grip him tightly through the thin cotton of his boxers, Killian had to fight hard to keep hold of his composure. He'd forgotten how bold Emma could be, and he'd also forgotten just how much he loved that about her.

As she worked her magic through his underwear, Killian busied himself with removing hers. The more she touched him the more he ached to be inside of her, and he knew they were playing a dangerous game with his restraint.

The moment she was fully bared to him, Emma tugged the last of his clothing down his legs, allowing Killian to kick them off as she pushed on his shoulder to get him to lay back against the pillows.

"Is this okay?" she asked, swinging a leg over his hips to sit astride him. His cock brushed against her rounded stomach with the movement and Killian groaned at how incredible that one small touch felt after so long without it.

"God, yes. But I uh… I don't have any condoms on me," he suddenly realised, as he screwed his eyes shut in defeat. Of course they'd get that far only to realise they were unprepared for the moment.

"It's okay. As long as you're clean we'll be fine," she assured him, rocking gently to try and ease some of the tension curling in her belly.

Killian shot her a confused look and it took Emma longer than it should have to work out what he was asking.

"It's standard practice to give all pregnant women STD tests. I'm clean. I haven't been with anyone since you. And in case you missed it, I'm already pregnant. So it's not like we need to worry about that."

Killian chuckled as he lifted a hand to rub softly over her tummy before sliding it up to cup one of her breasts. "I'm clean. I haven't been with anyone since that night either." He was too busy staring at Emma's ample assets to notice the look of disbelief that crossed her features at his words. "Are these bigger?"

"Pregnancy," she sighed.

Killian began to massage the slightly larger swell of her breasts with his long fingers, drawing sighs of contentment from the woman above him. But when he reached up to brush his thumbs over her nipples, instead of the gasp of pleasure he was expecting, the one that fell from Emma's lips sounded pained.

"Sorry. They're uh… they're just a little sensitive right now."

"It's okay. I'll avoid them," he promised, as he pushed himself up to press a kiss over the soft flesh just above her nipple.

Emma hummed in satisfaction at the feel of his wonderful fingers massaging over her body, finding all of the new curves that pregnancy had given to her. But with every move he made, she found herself grinding down on his lap until she was almost dizzy with her need for him.

"Lift up for me, Darling?" he asked sweetly. One of his hands moved to the swell of her arse to help steady her moves, while the other wrapped around his cock.

As Emma pushed up onto her knees, Killian brushed himself over her wet flesh, teasing them both for as long as they could stand before he guided himself inside of her. He didn't thrust up or pull her down onto him, though. Instead, Killian's hands settled on her waist as he waited for Emma to adjust to his size, allowing her to slowly drop her body down over his with a long moan of satisfaction.

"God… You feel just as good as I remember," he whispered harshly.

Emma seemed to be beyond the capacity for speech at that moment. All that fell from her lips were soft gasps and breathy moans as she rolled her hips into his, taking her pleasure from his body.

Their time together that evening was much softer and sweeter than it had been the night they'd conceived their child, but the connection they felt to each other seemed to burn hotter and brighter as the two lovers lost themselves in each other's eyes.

Emma was the first to come, her warmth tightening around him as her movements faltered and her head fell back on her shoulders. The soft cry of, "_Killian. Yes_," that fell from her lips was one of the most beautiful sounds the prince had ever heard, and it only took two more thrusts before he was spilling inside of her as he held tightly to Emma's hips, keeping himself anchored to the moment.

When their breathing slowed a little, Emma lifted herself off the prince and cringed at the wet, sticky mess already doing its best to escape her body. She'd _just _changed her sheets and now she'd need to change them again.

"Stay here," Killian told her, pressing a kiss to her forehead as he slipped out of the bed and padded from the room. He returned a few moments later with a small towel in his hands and gently used it to clean her down, before throwing it into the laundry basket in the corner of the room.

"I need to use the bathroom," Emma grumbled, struggling to push herself up into a sitting position while her muscles were so relaxed and loose. "I'll be right back. Make yourself comfortable."

When she returned a few moments later, feeling fresher and looking thoroughly exhausted, she found the prince sitting against her headboard with his phone in his hands.

"Is everything okay?"

"Yeah. I uh…" Killian lifted his head to meet her eyes and the prince looked suddenly vulnerable as he explained, "I told my security detail I'd be spending the night here. I hope I didn't overstep or anything."

"No. No, of course not," she assured him. Emma pulled herself back onto the bed and didn't hesitate to curl into his side. Well, as best as she could with her bump in the way.

Killian chuckled a little at how she struggled to get comfortable before he set the phone down on his bedside table and reached out to flick off the light. When the room was shrouded in darkness, he gently rolled Emma until she had her back to him and then curled his body in behind hers, wrapping an arm around both her and their child.

"You'll still be here when I wake up in the morning, right?" he asked, as he pressed a soft kiss behind her ear.

"It's my house. Where would I go?"

"I dunno. I just… I just don't wanna wake up without you again, Emma."

"I'll be here," she whispered into the darkness, bringing her hand down to run softly over the strong lines of his arm. "I promise."

* * *

**Thanks for reading and reviewing. **

**I hope you're all staying safe and well. X**


	9. Chapter 8

When Killian awoke the next morning, he wasn't amused to find the space beside him on the bed cold and empty. Emma had promised that she would stay with him until he woke up, and while he didn't think that she'd run away from her own home in the middle of the night, he was a little hurt that he hadn't yet been able to wake to the feeling of her still in his arms.

"Emma?" he called out softly, as he snatched his jeans from the floor and pulled them up his legs.

There was no reply from the mother of his child, but Killian hadn't really expected one.

He pushed open the door to the bedroom, intending to head downstairs to see if she was there, but froze when he noticed the door to the bathroom was shut. It hadn't been that way when they'd gone up to bed, and he knew it hadn't been that way when Emma had finished using it the night before.

"Emma?" he called out again, gently rapping his knuckles on the wood.

There was a moment of silence before she called back, "I'll be out in a second." The sound that followed it was one that Killian recognised well from his teenage years.

He pushed down softly on the door handle and was relieved to find it unlocked, but the sight that greeted him was a little more worrying. Emma was sat on the bathroom floor with her head over the toilet bowl as she vomited profusely. Killian didn't hesitate to make his way to her side, dropping down to kneel on the floor as he reached out to pull her hair away from her face.

"Oh, Sweetheart," he sighed. "You should have woken me."

"It's okay," she mumbled, reaching up for the flush as she pulled back a little from the bowl. "It'll pass soon enough."

Killian pushed himself to his feet to dampen a flannel and passed it over for Emma to clean herself up a little, as he cast a quick look around the room. There wasn't a glass inside of it but he thought he remembered seeing one on Emma's nightstand before he'd fallen asleep, so he quickly made his way back into the bedroom to grab it. Once he had washed it out, he poured a cool glass of water and handed it to Emma, so that she could rinse her mouth.

"Thank you," she mumbled, pressing the cold glass to her forehead. "I was feeding Sherlock, because he's an impatient bastard, and I guess the smell of his new salmon dinner didn't quite agree with me."

"Does this happen often?"

"No. I got really lucky with the morning sickness. It's only the odd thing that sets me off now. And it's perfectly natural," she reassured him, as she reached for one of his hands.

Killian sat with Emma on the floor, holding her hand as his other held her hair away from her face, until the sickness had passed that morning. When she was finished and he could see the exhaustion creeping into her features, he helped her clean up and quickly ushered her back into bed.

"I'm sorry this wasn't the romantic morning you were hoping for," she mumbled, watching him push down his jeans before he climbed under the covers and into the bed beside her.

"You're carrying our child, Emma. There's nothing about this situation that isn't romantic to me." He took a moment to make sure the duvet was tucked securely around her body and then curled himself in behind her, dropping a hand down to rest over their child. "I told you that I wanted to be a part of this and I meant it. That means the good _and_ the bad. So don't worry about it, Love. Just get some rest and… maybe let me feed Sherlock when we wake up."

Emma chuckled into her pillow as she dropped a hand down to cover his own. She was fast asleep in Killian's arms only seconds later.

* * *

When Killian woke again that morning, it was with a soft, warm body tucked against his own. He took a moment just to enjoy the feeling of having a beautiful woman resting in his arms, and then allowed his eyes to open fully.

A quick check of his phone told him that it was closing in on ten, which meant that he'd need to leave soon if he had any hope of making it back to London before anyone could realise that he was gone.

When he'd opened those DNA results the previous day, it had felt like everything else in his life was melting away. All he'd wanted to do was get to Emma as soon as he could. He'd perhaps been a little reckless in how quickly he'd called for a car and dashed out of his front door. But as his driver had made the journey up to Nottingham, he hadn't spared a second thought for how his impulsive actions might have looked.

While he scrolled through the notifications on the device, Killian's attention was drawn to the number of reminders he'd been sent by his personal secretary. In his haste to see Emma again, he had completely forgotten that it was Remembrance weekend in the UK, and that he had a packed schedule of events to mark the occasion. The alert for the Festival of Remembrance that would be taking place that evening was a harsh reminder of his duty to his country, and Killian groaned a little as he realised that it would pull him away from Emma Swan once again.

When he'd first met her, Killian had been drawn to Emma in a way that he knew he'd never be able to explain. It wasn't just that she was the most beautiful woman in the room that night. There was something about her that had grabbed his attention the moment she'd sat down with her friends. Something that kept drawing his eyes to her, even across a crowded dance floor. It was the same something that had compelled him to follow her when she'd headed to the restroom alone - and then to invite her back to his room. He didn't know what that something was, but Killian knew it was still there. It had returned the moment he'd laid eyes on her in the hospital all those weeks before. The knowledge that she now carried his child - _their_ _child - _had only seemed to amplify it.

Simply put, Killian couldn't get enough of her.

A part of him wanted to contact every news outlet in the country to tell them about Emma and the child they were expecting. He was excited about becoming a father, and he really couldn't have asked for a better partner to take that journey with. However, the more rational side of his brain didn't hesitate to remind him that contacting the media right then would probably be the worst mistake of his life.

"Whatcha thinking about?" Emma hummed lazily, as she stretched her body out along the line of his own before dropping her hand down to cover his, where it rested over her bump.

"I don't think I'm gonna tell anyone about you or this little one." Killian's hand rubbed small circles into her flesh to make his point, but when he realised that Emma had frozen under his touch, he rushed to add, "At least, not until after the baby's born."

Emma remained frozen for a moment before she pulled away to roll over and face him. "Why not?" she asked carefully. "I thought you wanted your parents to know."

"Oh, I do. I'm not ashamed of you," he declared passionately, when he saw her doubts and fears begin to manifest in the form of tears. "I'm just… I want to protect you, Emma. _Both of you_. And the only way to do that right now is to keep this quiet. If I issue a press release about this today, you won't be able to leave your home tomorrow without being followed everywhere you go. It'll get so bad that you'll probably have to quit your job. And you certainly won't be given the privacy to deliver our baby where you want, and in the way you want, if I make this news public. Any way we look at this, the press will frame this as some sort of scandal – and you'll be villainised for it. You don't deserve that and I _certainly_ don't want that for you. So for now, I think it's best if we keep this to ourselves until we've devised some kind of strategy that will protect you both."

Killian reached out to run his fingers softly through Emma's hair, gently teasing the wayward strands away from her face before he leaned forward to brush his lips over hers.

"And what about your parents?" she asked. "Are you going to tell them?"

Killian took a moment to consider her question. He'd love nothing more than the chance to take Emma home to meet his family. To ask his mother for help planning for his little one's arrival, and listen to his brother brag about what kind of cool uncle he'd be. But his family wasn't like other families, and that was where his problem rested.

"No," he replied after a moment. "No, I don't think that's a good idea."

When Emma opened her mouth to ask why, he hurried to add, "My father isn't just my father, Emma. He's the head of our family. He's the CEO of our institution and he's been trained from a very young age to always protect that institution and the reputation it holds. If I told him about us, he'd try to handle the potential scandal – and I don't want that. _You _don't want that."

"Why? What would he do? I mean, it's not like he'd have me bumped off… right?"

"No," Killian chuckled. "But he could do a whole host of other things that would make your life a nightmare. He could pay you a large sum of money to sign a contract saying that you'll never see me again, and that you'll never try to claim that our child is _my _child." It was by far one of the worst situations his mind had managed to conjure up. He didn't think his father would go as far as to physically harm Emma, but Killian wouldn't put using large bribes and air-tight contracts past King Brennan.

"I wouldn't sign that contract," she protested fiercely.

"Oh, you would," Killian chuckled bitterly. "They always do. My father wouldn't ask unless he had something to hold over you. Something to make sure that you took him up on his offer. And that's a whole other problem right there. My father wouldn't think twice about ruining your life in order to protect the reputation he's built. I don't want that for you. I don't want that for our child!"

"And there's no other way around this?" Emma pushed herself up to a sitting position as she began to worry about what the future might hold for the three of them. She wanted Killian to be a part of their child's life. Hell, she wanted him to be a part of _her _life. She didn't want them to have to sneak around in the shadows forever. Her child was more than just some dirty secret that couldn't be mentioned in public. They deserved better than that. _She _deserved better than that.

"Marriage?" he suggested, with a simple shrug of his shoulders. "We could get married and claim we've been secretly dating for a while. That we wanted to marry before our child was born, and we wanted to have a private ceremony. My father would probably even offer to have someone 'fix' the official records to make it look like our child was conceived before we married."

Emma's face seemed to be frozen in horror, and Killian allowed her just a moment of panic before he folded her into his arms with a wry chuckle.

"Don't worry, Swan. I like you and I certainly want to continue exploring this thing between us, but I'm not ready to jump into marriage with you just yet. We barely know each other. _If _we get married, then I want that to happen when we're both absolutely certain that it's what we want. Which is why I don't think we should tell my parents about you, or our baby, until after this little one is born."

"Okay," she whispered. "I just… I don't wanna ruin your reputation, Killian."

"You won't," he assured her, as he pulled back a little to meet her eyes. "This is the twenty-first century, Emma. If people can't accept the fact that I'm having a child out of wedlock when _thousands_ of people in this country do the same thing every day, then that's more their issue than it is mine. I won't let their opinions bother me. _Your _opinions are the only ones I care for when it comes to the topic of our child."

Emma leaned forward to brush her lips over his, a silent thank you for not only considering what would be best for her and their child in this situation, but also for believing in _them_. When she pulled back, she was still wearing a soft, dreamy smile, and Killian was positive that it was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen in his life.

"How about we get you some breakfast?" he suggested. He was rapidly running out of time with her that morning, and while a large part of him wanted nothing more than to keep her in that bed, safe within the circle of his arms, another part was busy reminding him that she was pregnant with his child and after vomiting earlier that day, she probably needed to eat.

"That sounds good," she hummed. "Do you cook?"

"On occasion. But I was thinking of sending the security team parked outside of your house to go and get us something."

Emma bolted upright in the bed as she clutched a sheet to her chest to protect her modesty. Killian would have laughed at the absurdity of the action, given that he'd seen her naked more times than she claimed anyone else had in the last few years, but the look of concern on her face stopped him from doing so.

"They've been outside all night?" she worried.

"Yup."

"Should I have invited them in?"

"Nope." He chuckled a little as he pushed himself up to sit beside her, and then leaned in to wrap an arm around her shoulders. "It's okay, Emma. It's what they do. It's not the first time they've spent all evening in a vehicle waiting for me and it won't be the last." When she raised a brow at him in silent inquiry, Killian rushed to add, "Not that I often spend the night at other women's homes. I just meant when I'm away visiting friends, or when I'm out at events."

This time, Emma was the one to snort out a chuckle as she turned her head to press her lips to his cheek.

"You're so cute when you're flustered," she told him, before sliding out of the bed to walk gloriously naked around the room, and grab her robe from where it hung inside of her closet. If she added a little extra sway to each of her steps while she moved, nobody needed to know that.

* * *

Emma wasn't sure where Killian's team managed to find a place selling a full English breakfast at what was arguably closer to lunchtime than breakfast time, but she certainly wasn't going to complain. She hadn't realised just how hungry she was until the food had been placed in front of her, and her tummy had given an appreciative growl.

"So, when can I see you again?" Killian asked, as he set his cutlery down on his plate and reached for the glass of orange juice Emma had poured for him.

"I'm back at work on Wednesday, so if you're busy with engagements at the start of the week, you're probably best waiting for my next few days off."

"What do you do when you're not working during your days on?"

"Not much," she chuckled. "Sleep a little, some cleaning, a little shopping, maybe binge a Netflix series. My life's not terribly exciting."

Killian leaned to one side in his seat so that he could fish his phone out of his pocket and then brought up his calendar. "I have to be back in London tonight for the Festival of Remembrance, and then I have a few engagements to start my week. But I don't have anything planned for Thursday and Friday. I could come and see you then? I can always book a hotel room, if you'd rather not have me in your home while you're working."

Emma was pretty sure her jaw dropped a little at his offer. She'd expected him to suggest visiting on one of her days off, so that they would have time to do something together. She hadn't expected him to be so eager to see her again that he'd want to come while she was working twelve-hour shifts.

"Really? You'd wanna see me then? I'm gone like… all night. You'd have nothing to do. And then when I get home I'm probably just gonna sleep until lunchtime."

"That's fine with me," he assured her. "I have some schedules to work out and paperwork that I can do while you're gone. I could even try and finally watch one of those Netflix shows that everyone raves about. I _still _haven't seen Breaking Bad and that show's been over for years," he chuckled. "I could make you a sandwich for lunch when you wake up and take care of feeding Sherlock while you're gone. I just wanna spend time with you, Emma. I don't care what we do with that time or where we spend it. Just as long as we're together."

Emma leaned over the table to press a kiss to his lips. She was worried that if she tried to form words to express just how much she appreciated his sweet gesture, her hormones would take over and she'd turn into a sobbing mess in his arms. Instead, when she pulled away, she simply whispered, "Thank you."

"You don't have to thank me for wanting to be with you," he chuckled. "I'm the one who should be thanking you for allowing me into your home. Usually, it takes months of planning for me to go anywhere."

"Well… we could plan months in advance if that would make you feel better?" she offered.

Killian pushed himself up and out of his seat to take their plates over to the sink, but he didn't hesitate to drop a kiss to her head on the way past.

"I'm not sure I could wait a few months to see you again," he told her, as he busied himself with running some water to wash off their plates and cutlery. It had been years since he'd hand-washed dishes, but Emma was growing their child inside of her, so as far as he was concerned, cleaning up after them both was the least he could do. "The last time I went months without seeing you was bad enough. When I got back from my deployment, I was tempted to stake out that club every night until you came back to it."

"You might have been waiting a while," she giggled, because the mental image of the prince sat in the darkened corner of a club, waiting just to see her again, seemed rather hilarious to Emma. "I haven't exactly been in a clubbing mood with this little Mango sapping what's left of my energy."

Killian turned to offer her a shy smile as he rinsed off their plates and stood them in the draining rack, before he turned back to the sink once more. "I'd have found you eventually, Emma. I was so close to telling my driver to just drive around the streets of Nottingham when I was here to open that birthing suite. And if that had failed… I'd have found some other way to track you down."

He was silent for a moment as he finished washing their cutlery and then rinsed it off. Killian turned to look around for a towel to dry everything with and Emma called out a quiet, "Behind you."

"Do you um… do you think you'd have tried looking for me?" he eventually asked. "You know… with the baby and everything."

"I tried. I called the club to see if they could help me find you, but they wouldn't give me any information about their clients. I even tried searching the internet to see if anyone famous was in the area that weekend, but apparently, there are more famous people in Nottingham than I first thought. I also contemplated going back to see if you'd show again, even if I had to wait until the baby was born to do so. I just… never, in my wildest dreams, would I have assumed that you were a member of the royal family. So, I think I probably ended up overlooking some crucial information there."

Killian said nothing as he finished drying off their plates and then put them back into the cupboard he'd seen Emma take them from. The silverware went into the small draw on the other side of the kitchen, and then he took a moment to clean around the sink. When the towel was hung through the handle of the oven to dry, he finally made his way back to Emma's side.

"I'm glad we found each other again," he told her, reaching up to brush her hair behind her ear.

"Me too," Emma agreed, tilting her head back to meet his lips for another soft and sweet kiss.

* * *

**Thanks for reading and reviewing. **

**I think I've caught up on replies now so if you have any questions or I missed you at all, please feel free to message me. **

**And for my guest reviewer in Chapter 6 - The UK offers universal healthcare. As a result of this, all examinations and tests run by the NHS when a woman is pregnant are purely to check the health of the mother and child. They are not for things like DNA testing or gender scans. If a baby's gender can be determined during a 20 week checkup, then you can ask and the technician will tell you. If it cannot be determined but all of the growth measurements can be taken, you will not be offered another appointment and if you want to know the gender of your child you'll have to pay for a private scan. That policy applied back in the 90s and it still applied in 2014 when I gave birth to my youngest child. **


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